By Adedapo Adesanya
Federal, States, and Local Governments in Nigeria all received a total of N8.15 trillion in 2019 from the Federation Accounts and Allocation Committee (FAAC), a report by the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has disclosed.
NEITI revealed in its latest Quarterly Review report released on Thursday in Abuja that the amount was lower to what was received in the previous year, 2018, by N377 billion equivalent to 4.42 percent. It said the total amount received for that year was N8.52 trillion, while in 2017, the three tiers of government shared N6.42 trillion, which was N1.73 trillion lower than the 2019 figure.
It was stated that out of the N8.15 billion disbursed last year, federal government received N3.37 trillion, representing 41.4 percent of total pay-outs; all 36 states got N2.76 trillion (representing 33.9 percent) while the 774 local governments got a total of N1.65 trillion (20.2 percent).
From the state government collection, NEITI showed that Delta State received the highest in sum of N218.58 billion from the Federal Account while Osun state was the lowest recipient with N24.14 billion.
In a comparative breakdown with preceding years 2017 and 2018, the NEITI Report showed that the total disbursements to the federal government in 2019 were 3.1 percent lower than the disbursements in 2018, but 31.7 percent higher than in 2017.
In terms of the country’s 36 states, the disbursements to the states last year were 3.12 percent lower than those in 2018 and were 48.5 percent higher than those in 2017.
Also, at the local governments level in 2019, disbursements were 1.08 percent lower than they were in 2018, but 9.75 percent higher than what was recorded in 2017.
In a yearly comparative breakdown, which analysed a seven-year pay-out from 2013 till 2019, it was disclosed that 2013 recorded the highest disbursements of N9.7 trillion; followed by 2014 N8.6 trillion, while 2018 came third with N8.5 trillion while 2019 had the fourth highest disbursements of N8.1 trillion.
Taking a further look at the states’ numbers, it showed that three states received less than N40 billion, nine states received between N40 billion- N49billion while fourteen states received between N50 billion – N59 billion while four other states got N60 – N69 billion.
The report noted that four states of the Niger Delta Region plus Lagos were among the big league of states that received over N100 billion from FAAC allocations due to the 13 percent derivation paid to the oil producing states.
Modupe Gbadeyanka