RipplesMetric: In 2024, state govts, assemblies will spend N1.214 trillion on themselves (Part I)

A compilation of data gathered on the 2024 budget for various states in Nigeria has shown that N840.1 billion has been approved as expenditure for 35 state governors’ offices.

This amount excludes the Rivers State government budget, which is hanging on controversy due to political crises rocking the executive and legislative quarters.

The concerns, however, on states’ budgets are tied to fiscal sustainability, transparency and how much revenue can fuel the budget. More than half of the states depend on domestic and external loans from multilateral institutions and allocation from the federal government to run their budget against the internally generated revenue.

On the other hand, N374.26 billion, excluding the Rivers State budget, was also earmarked to be spent by the state assemblies in 2024. This amount encompasses, overhead cost, capital expenditures and the assembly service commissions.

Together, the 35 state governments and their various houses of assemblies will spend about N1.214 trillion.

For the first part of this report, RipplesMetrics looks into the budget for states in the Southern region, juxtaposing the figures to identify what arm of the government gets the highest expenditure.

In the southern region, the total budget for the 16 states’ assemblies, excluding Rivers, is N221.09 billion. However, the governor’s offices for these states are expected to spend N538.8 billion for 2024.

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A cursory look at the data shows that the states with the highest budgets for their state assembly are Lagos with N70.56 billion; Imo with N26.85 billion:Edo with N26.17 billion and Ogun with N14.41 billion.

Others include the Delta assembly with N14.17 billion, Ondo assembly with N11.34 billion, Cross River with N10.82 billion, Oyo with N9.68 billion and Anambra with N7.23 billion.

Also, Abia assembly has N6.43 billion, Enugu assembly with N6.23 billion, Akwa Ibom with N5.84 billion, Osun with N4.13 billion, Ekiti with N2.8 billion, Ebonyi with N2.39 billion and Bayelsa with N2.04 billion.

On the other hand, the states with the highest budget for the governor’s offices are Lagos with N66.8 billion, Ogun with N64.2 billion, Cross River with N53.4 billion, Oyo with N49.9 billion, Delta with N49.4 billion, Imo with N45.2 billion and Akwa Ibom with N41.2 billion.

Others are Anambra with N35.4 billion, Enugu with N34.1 billion, Edo with an23.7 billion, Abia with N19.2 billion, Ekiti with N18.9 billion, Osun with N13 billion, Ebonyi with N11.3 billion, Bayelsa with N11.2 billion and Ondo with N1.9 billion.

Our findings showed that only Lagos, Edo and Ondo states allocated more money to the state assemblies than the governor’s office.

Also, for states like Ogun, Ebonyi, Bayelsa, Ondo, Enugu and Anambra, the allocation to the governor’s office is more than twice what is budgeted to their respective state assemblies.

By: James Odunayo

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