Checking the books: Okonjo Iweala, left, with Otunla, right and and Okogu, centre

Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala warned Nigeria’s 36 state governments to work harder in boosting their internally generated revenue as revenue from oil sales nose-dives.

She spoke at the Federal Accounts Allocation Committee meeting, which was attended by 36 state finance commissioners and the minister of state for finance, Bashir Yuguda.

Revenue shared among all the tiers of government increased to N628.8 billion for the month of November, compared with the N593.33 billion shared in October. In August, N611 billion was shared and in July N673 billion.

Okonjo-Iweala dampened any excitement over it as the indices showed declines in several areas of revenue collection such as oil export and VAT and Excess Crude Account. VAT revenue collected for the month of November was N60.6 billion as against the N67.1 billion distributed in October, representing a decrease of N6.5 billion. The sum of N383.1 billion was generated as mineral revenue in November as against the N420 billion in October.

Non-Mineral revenue for November also decreased by N1 billion. Nigeria earned N115.1 billion as against the N116.7 billion it generated in October.

Worse of all, balance in the Excess Crude Account, stood at $3.1 billion dollars, as against $4.1 billion in October.

“As you can see, we are in for some hard time. It is time for all of them to look towards raising more internally generated revenue.

“But in the medium term, we will also look at tax policy, issues like the VAT.

“You know governors already rose from their last nationally economic council to say that they will like the VAT to be looked at,’’ Okonjo-Iweala said.

Yuguda, said the distributable statutory revenue for the month was N427.6 billion, comprising N35.5 billion from SURE-P and N6.3 billion refunded by NNPC to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
According to him, another N6.1 billion was shared as part of exchange gain for the month.

“So, the total revenue distributable for the month, including Value Added Tax (VAT) of N60.6 billion and another N55.6 billion payment from NNPC is approximately N628.8 billion,’’ he said.

Yuguda said a breakdown of the distribution showed that the Federal Government received N196.4 billion, representing 52.68 per cent; and states, N99.649 billion, representing 26.72 per cent. In November, the Federal Government received N224.26 billion representing 52.68 per cent, and states, N113.75 billion, representing 26.72 per cent.

He further said that the local governments received N76.8 billion, amounting to 20.60 per cent of the amount distributed.

The minister said that N39.9 billion, representing 13 per cent derivation revenue was also shared among the oil producing states.