States grossed N784bn IGR in 2016

The 36 states of the federation were able to generate a total of N784,129,464,573.48 internally in 2016 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.
Many states have been working on increasing their IGR to mitigate the effects of the shortfall in revenue from federation account.
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.
With the N13,777,026,969.63 Ogun State generated in 2013, it earned less than Delta, Kano, Edo, Akwa Ibom, Oyo and Enugu states. It also fell behind Delta and Enugu in IGR with the N17,497,620,787.52 it earned in 2014.
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.
Contrariwise, 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.