OBINNA EZUGWU
Nigeria’s Federal, State and Local Governments shared a total sum of N3. 879 trillion in the first half of 2020.
This according to a report by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) published on Tuesday.
The report said allocation to the three tiers of government in the first half of 2020 reduced when compared to 2019.
NEITI Director of Communications and Advocacy, Mr. Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, in a statement gave a breakdown of the allocations.
According to him, a breakdown of the disbursements showed that N1.53 trillion went to the Federal Government, while the states got N1.29 trillion and the 774 local government areas received N771.34 billion.
Orji said the federal government suffered a reduction in its allocation in the first half of 2020 as N1.53 trillion was received which is 4.28 per cent lower than the N1.599 trillion it got in the first half of 2019 and 7.36 per cent lower than the N1.652 trillion it received in the first half of 2018.
According to the statement, a total of N1.298 trillion was disbursed to state governments in the first half of 2020 which was 2.8 per cent lower than the N1.35 trillion disbursed in the first half of 2019, and 5.6 per cent lower than the N1.375 trillion disbursed in the first half of 2020.
“For local government areas, the 2020 first half disbursements were 2.64% and 3.04% lower than the corresponding disbursements for 2019 and 2018 respectively,” the statement read.
Orji said among the 36 states, Osun State had the lowest net disbursement of N13.13 billion, while Delta State had the highest net disbursement of N100.81 billion.
He revealed further that the total net disbursements received by Delta State (N100.81 billion) was higher than the combined total net disbursements of N99.47 billion received by six states namely Osun, Cross River, Plateau, Ogun, Gombe and Ekiti.
“Also, the combined total net disbursements of N321.29 billion received by the four highest receiving states of Delta, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, and Bayelsa were higher than the combined total net disbursements of N314.08 billion received by 16 states– Osun, Cross River, Plateau, Ogun, Gombe, Ekiti, Zamfara, Kwara, Nassarawa, Ebonyi, Taraba, Benue, Adamawa, Ondo, Bauchi, and Abia”. While Lagos State had the highest deductions, Yobe State had the lowest.” he said
“In the months under consideration in 2020, aggregate disbursements fluctuated by large amounts, compared to 2018 and 2019.
“Aggregate disbursements were N716.3 billion in January and this fell to N647.4 billion in February. Thereafter, disbursements fell to N581.6 billion in March, before increasing to N780.9 billion in April. Disbursements then fell to N606.2 billion in May and to N547.3 billion in June.
“These figures indicate differences of N68.9 billion between January and February, N65.7 billion between February and March, N199.3 billion between March and April, N174.7 billion between April and May, and N58.9 billion between May and June.
For comparison, the highest inter-month difference in the first half of 2018 was N62.9 billion, while the corresponding figure for 2019 was N63.5 billion. Thus, there have been very wide fluctuations in aggregate disbursements so far in 2020,” the statement read.
