In a lecture delivered at Babcock University’s 12th Convocation titled, ‘Transforming Nigeria economy: Opportunities and Challenges’, Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala gave the breakdown of the allocations of Nigeria’s 10 highest revenue receiving states based on the federal allocations in 2013.
Finance Minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala listed the states which according to her, earn more than the annual budgets of some neighboring countries and queried what these states have been doing with their allocations.
The allocations are as follows:
Akwa Ibom N260 billion,
Rivers N230 billion,
Delta State N209 billion,
Bayelsa N173 billion,
Lagos N168 billion,
Kano N140 billion,
Katsina N103 billion
Oyo N100 billion
Kaduna N 97 billion
Borno N94 billion.
“These were the allocations that all these states got last year, so the question is what did they do with it? Analysis shows that many Nigerian states receive revenue allocation which are larger than budgetary allocation of neighbouring countries such as Liberia which is $433 million, Gambia $210 million.
” So you see that our top 10 states receive more money than these countries and therefore you
should be asking what is this money being used for?” Okonjo-Iweala said.“However it is not often that you hear people asking what has your state done? Most of their attention is turned to the federal government so we also need to ask what do our state and local government do with the resources they get?” Okonjo-Iweala further stated.
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