The Bayelsa government has dismissed the 2022 fiscal sustainability report on Nigerian states released by BudgiT, a public finance transparency-focused civil society organisation.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Rivers tops the 2022 fiscal performance ranking, followed by Kaduna and Cross River, while Yobe, Bayelsa and Benue sit at the bottom of the table.
The Bayelsa government, in a statement released by Mr Maxwell Ebibai, Commissioner for Finance, questioned the report.
Ebibai faulted the methodology used to arrive at the rankings and pointed out that it did not reflect the current financial standing of the state.
The commissioner said the report was merely a rehash of the 2021 ranking.
“Our reaction then as now is that not only is this report faulty but relies on tangential parameters inconsistent with economic fundamentals.
“As before, the current report erroneously depended on opaque data and criteria bordering largely on the ability of a state to meet its operating expenses (recurrent expenditure) with only its Internally Generated Revenue.
“The very notion of creating a dichotomy between “Federal Allocations” and “Internally Generated Revenue” is a misnomer, “the statement said.
It said that it is “adding insult to painful injury as over the years, we have protested the absence of true fiscal federalism and inequity of the revenue-sharing formula that robs states such as Bayelsa in favour of the collective,” Ebibai stated in the statement.
He maintained that it was incomprehensible not to appreciate that oil and gas had produced at a significant opportunity cost to states and that the derivation revenue compensated for such brutal environmental degradation.
According to him, Bayelsa government protested against the 2021 ranking as being defective for excluding key revenue sources such as mineral oil derivation funds in the analysis, a position the BudgiT team acknowledged.
“We are again bewildered that they returned to this cynical profiling. It should be worrisome to BudgiT that the huge revenue that should accrue to Bayelsa from taxes of oil multinationals operating in the state were being paid to states where the companies have their offices domiciled.
“Notwithstanding the disequilibrium, we are happy to state unequivocally that the financial standing and sustainability of Bayelsa State are sound and not in any jeopardy as the government can comfortably meet its obligations, including regular payment of salaries and pensions,” the statement read in part.
Ebibai noted that it was also disturbing that a state with a low debt profile that was effectively managing its financial liabilities would be ranked low against states with a higher debt profile, more so when Bayelsa was clearing its debts.
On biometric capturing of the state’s civil servants, he said that Bayelsa had successfully concluded the process to achieve payroll transparency.
According to him, the government continues to invest in human capital development and empowerment programmes, without neglecting critical financially demanding infrastructure projects such as the Yenagoa-Oporoma Road and Bridges, the Sagbama-Ekeremor Road with seven bridges and the Nembe-Brass Road with 10 bridges amongst other projects across the state that will stir its economic life.
Ebibai noted that states with limited federal presence were inherently disadvantaged with the ranking methodology where facilities such as ports give a clear edge to some states.
He recommended that for a fair analysis and a more comparable measure of fiscal sustainability, BudgiT should expand its indices to cover derivation revenue as IGR in future profiling.
He explained that the Bayelsa government was in strong disagreement with the ranking and wished to state categorically that it rejected the report.
Ebibai said it failed to rely on key financial instruments that were legitimate, equitable and sustainable. (
In the same vein ,The Ogun State government has refuted the statistical agency, BudgIT Foundation’s widely publicised report on internally generated revenue across the 36 states of Nigeria titled “State of States, 2022 Edition” with respect to the state’s financial health status.
In a letter to the foundation’s director by the state Commissioner for Finance, Dapo Okubadejo, the state government described BudgIT Foundation’s ranking of Ogun State as having an IGR of N78.17bn for 2021 as inaccurate and misleading.
It provided the State ’s Audited report from the Joint Tax Board and the state’s Audited Financial Statement, which put the state’s IGR for 2021 at N100.9 bn.
It, therefore, demanded a retraction of the said publication, which it said had caused the Gateway State reputational damage, and a publication of the updated figures and the true ranking of the state on BudgIT Foundation’s website.
The Ogun State government’s position has indeed been corroborated by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) which, on Tuesday, released the correct IGR figures for Ogun State, confirming the efforts by the Dapo Abiodun-led administration to put the economy on a sound footing and make Ogun Nigeria’s top investment destination.
According to NBS, in its latest report, the 36 states and the FCT recorded IGR to the tune of N1.89 trillion in 2021 as against the 2020 figure of N1.56 trillion of IGR in 2020, a 22 per cent year-on-year positive growth.
According to the report, Ogun, which grew its IGR from N50.6bn in 2020 to N100.9bn in 2021, performed excellently on the IGR index, being only out-performed by Lagos State, Nigeria’s economic capital (N753.3bn); the Federal Capital Territory (FCT N131.9bn) and Rivers State, a top oil-producing state (N123.3bn).
According to notable industrialists and investors such as Tony Elumelu and Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Ogun, Nigeria’s most industrialized state, has benefited massively from Governor Abiodun’s experience as a board room guru before his foray into politics and election, on May 29 2019, as the fifth democratically elected governor of the Gateway State.
