States to enhance IGR as FAAC disburses N400bn for December

State governments on Friday pledged to enhance their internally generated revenue (IGR) efforts such that they will no longer depend on Abuja for payment of salaries.

This came as Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) disbursed N400 billion to federal, states and local governments for the month of December 2015.

Newly elected Chairman, Forum of States Commissioners for Finance, Mr. Yunusa Mahmoud who made the pledge of increasing states’ IGR while speaking with finance reporters shortly after FAAC meeting in Abuja on Friday said states were ready to fully cooperate with Federal Government in ensuring economic development.

“We have decided to key into the implementation strategy of the Federal Government over the 2017 budget”, Mahmoud said while expressing their support for President Muhammadu Buhari and Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun.

“We will strive to depend less on allocations from Federation Account at least to the extent of locally generating enough to pay salaries”, he declared.

In 2016, the 36 states generated a total of N784,129,464,573.48 internally with Lagos taking the lead with the sum of N301,192,153,743.96, which is over 250 per cent higher than the N82,101,298,408.43 realised by Rivers, which came second on the list.

The IGR for the states came mainly from taxes and levies.

According to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Wednesday, the 2016 earning was N90,423,468247 in excess of the 2015 figure of N693,705,996,326.18.

While Lagos and Rivers were consistently the two highest IGR earners from 2011 to 2016, which the NBS report covered, Ogun State came from the middle range in previous years to clinch the third position in 2016.

In 2011, Ogun State generated N10,838,698,403.20, coming behind states like Delta, Edo, Akwa Ibom, Benue and Abia. In 2012, the state generated N12,438,765,025.22, which placed it behind Delta, Edo, Oyo, Akwa Ibom and Abia.

In 2015, aside the two traditional highest earners, only Delta earned more than Ogun State’s N34,596,446,519.52.

The state, however, moved up to the third position in 2016 with its N56,298,963,681.52.

However, Nasarawa State, which had generated more IGR than states like Zamfara, Taraba, Jigawa, Gombe and Ekiti in previous years, slid to the bottom with the N2,094,433,492 generated in 2016.

While giving breakdown of December allocation earlier at Friday’s FAAC briefing, Adeosun had broken the N400 billion down into value added tax- N79.273 billion; statutory revenue- N224.883 billion; exchange gain- N52.846; and excess petrol profit tax- N42.998.

In addition, Federal Government got N6.330 refund from Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

Of the N400 billion, Federal Government took N105.756 billion or 52.68 percent, state governments- N53.644 billion or 27.72 percent while local governments were allocated N41.357 billion, which is equivalent to 20.60 percent of total