Former Governor of Kwara State and current senator, Dr. Bukola Saraki has described the 2014 budget proposal of the President Goodluck Jonathan administration as full of inconsistencies that would condone serious fraud and impunity.
He said this in a critical analysis of the budget posted on his website.
Among other such inconsistencies, Saraki mentioned situations such as plans to buy units of desktop computers as N2 million each. He also disclosed that many items in the budget were listed repeatedly and money allocated to them on each occasion, while in some other situations, some of the items are very mysterious as they as ambiguous.
Read the full analysis below:
My Submission on The 2014 Budget
1) THE BUDGET THEME
The proposed budget christened Budget for Job Creation and Growth’ represents N100 billion reduction from the N4.7 trillion that was budgeted for last year.
Key assumptions of the budget include: crude oil 2.3mbpd, crude oil price $77.5pb, exchange rate of N160 to a dollar and a GDP growth of 6.75%
The budget proposes a recurrent expenditure of N2.4 Trillion and a capital expenditure of N1.1 Trillion. This translates to 76.3% of the budget for recurrent expenditure and just 23.7% for capital expenditure.
Aside infrastructure, there is a clear indication that the oil market is evolving fast with the entry of the Shale Oil from regions, which we considered to be our oil market main stay; countries like the US, China and even the UK are vigorously pursuing shale oil. What this means is that there is need to diversify our economy radically.
It is hard to see how the capital outlay expected here will galvanize this economic shift or movement away from oil.
ROUTINE BUDGETING WITH LITTLE IMPACT
It is regrettable to note that our National Budget process, which should have a lot of development implications, is fast becoming a mere procedural ritual to fulfil a legal condition rather than a scrutiny on efficient resource allocation and use for the welfare of our people.
Let’s be frank and admit that our budget process has been inadequate. And a lot of the failure of the budgets in the past cannot be completely ascribed to the executive alone. We, too, have a low pass mark on the budget ourselves, as we have not guarded our budget process effectively and have shielded away from vesting it with the right integrity assurance value it deserves. Today, we have a situation where even civil servants find no hesitation in abusing the provisions of the budget with impunity.
This 2014 budget may be our last opportunity to redeem ourselves and correct this budget anomaly. If we don’t seize this opportunity and put things right, soon it may begin to appear that National Assembly budget no longer matters. Why do I say so?
In recent years, we have seen a growing trend where the budget is scorned and hardly executed above 50%. Take the 2012 and 2013 budgets for instance, the percentage of implementation of the 2012 and 2013 budget has continued to dwindle while the level of extra-budgetary expenditure in the system unauthorized either by the appropriation Act or any other Act of the National Assembly has continued to rise.
It is the duty of the National assembly to rein in public expenditure and ensure probity through budgeting and oversight. It is an open secret that the levels of public revenues expended through extra-budgetary means have continued to grow at a frightening dimension.
Take the issue of revenues for e.g., how do we explain the expenditure of N700m daily on kerosene, even when there was no line item on the budget for kerosene subsidy in the 2013 budget. Again, the waste this exposes the budget to is not just as to the amount involved, but also the fact that the product is not available to Nigerians. How is it that this barefaced fleecing of the country and an unapologetic violation of the budget of this magnitude continue without any response from the National Assembly?
Another example is the parallel government called NNPC. Yes, it has become a parallel government. Otherwise how do you explain this- NNPC has openly told us that they had spent the missing $10bn (this is after questions were asked about unexplained shortfalls in remittances) of public revenue without appropriation? This is an amount far in excess of the national capital budget for the year 2014. No one would have known and NNPC would not have bothered to explain had there not been an enquiry over revenue shortfalls. Indeed, it is fair to say that what we have today is that we have two parallel government budgets, one that is authorized by the National Assembly and another running as extra-budget expenditures.
Part of the problem in my view is the process of budgeting. Our budget process lacks thorough scrutiny and deliberation and there is no consequence for budget violation- a matter considered high crime in other countries.
My attitude is this, if we the National Assembly, make the mistake of going into the 2014 the same way we have been doing we are doomed to fail. We must open our budget process a little further to allow for deliberation and scrutiny.
A situation where aside our committee budgets it’s hard for senators to contribute to and understand budgets covering other sectors as there is very little debate on sectarian basis for allocation made and how such is finally utilized. We hardly know the impact of our budget on senatorial basis.
There is little time to review how our budget affects our states, our farmers, market women, family budget, small-scale entrepreneurs our people in general.
A situation where as chairmen or members of committees assigned to scrutinize budget allocation to committee area of jurisdiction you cannot explain or be responsible for the finally approved budget within your area of scrutiny is a grave situation that requires attention.
It is no longer unheard of for third parties to infiltrate the budget process and inject things into the budget but it is happening and could happen again.
Make no mistake about it. A violation of the budget either during passage or implementation of the budget it is a gross abuse of office.
No matter how you look at it, a situation where an agency of government can, without qualms and bare-facedly claim to spend in extra-budgetary discretion the sum of $10bn an amount far greater than the entire federal capital budget for all government agencies and programs including education, health, roads, aviation, power, for the year in a manner that the National Assembly has no say about, calls to question the relevance of the National assembly in the revenue and expenditure process of our governance and more so whether our 1999 Constitution is the source of all authority in Nigeria.
For the avoidance of doubt, the 1999 Constitution declares in Section 1(1) and says, “This Constitution is supreme and its provisions shall have binding force on all authorities and persons throughout the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It goes further to provide in Section 80(1) that “All revenues or other moneys raised or received by the Federation (not being revenues or other moneys payable under this Constitution or any Act of the National Assembly into any other public fund of the Federation established for a specific purpose) shall be paid into and form one Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation.
(2) No moneys shall be withdrawn from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation except to meet expenditure that is charged upon the fund by this Constitution or where the issue of those moneys has been authorised by an Appropriation Act, Supplementary Appropriation Act or an Act passed in pursuance of section 81 of this Constitution.
(3) No moneys shall be withdrawn from any public fund of the Federation, other than the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation, unless the issue of those moneys has been authorised by an Act of the National Assembly.
(4) No moneys shall be withdrawn from the Consolidated Revenue Fund or any other public fund of the Federation, except in the manner prescribed by the National Assembly.”
While acknowledging that the executive have a pivotal role to play, the constitution recognizes the danger of allowing such a very important and onerous duty to be performed only by the executive and demanded rightfully that the National Assembly, the representative of the people approve the budget.
Our fellow Nigerians expect us to not just do that but that we do a thorough job of scrutinising the budget and ensuring that our scare resources are spent wisely and efficiently for the sole purpose of the welfare of our people.
I am happy that the SP has laid down the ground rule for this year’s budget consideration in his speech that this year’s budget “consideration will be robust and meticulous”; that we will “insist on accountability, probity and transparency. We will not wring our hands in apathy … we will work to ensure that the developmental goals underpinning the budget are fully realized”.
We can no longer allow ourselves to cave into the pressure to rush through for expediency sake in a job that requires rigor, thoroughness and cool-headedness consequently we create a budget that is hard to implement and when implemented produce unintended and incongruent consequences.
If we want budgets approved by the National Assembly to be faithfully implemented, then we must ensure that the process is deliberately exhaustive and followed. A situation where we have a revenue drop of over 40% is not good and shows lapse in budgeting. It means that the executive is not doing a thorough job before presenting to us the budget they seek approval for. We have allowed this situation to go on for long. The MTEF was passed without due process. The Fiscal Responsibility Act requires that mandatory and proper consultations with the states be carried out before the MTEF is prepared and presented. This did not happen. Last year’s capital releases came to not more than N900bn out of a total capital outlay of 1.4bn.
IMPORTANCE OF SCRUTINY
Much has been said about the need for further scrutiny but let us consider the present draft budget before us.
This budget even without much work reveals far too many costly inconsistencies. From the outset there are cost inconsistencies all over the budget and it would appear that there is a lack of meaningful attempt at efficient procurement evident in the entire budget. Some of the simplest is exemplified in a few reoccurring procurements all over the budget. Take for example the purchase of desktops where a unit is listed for 2m the same line item wherever listed under the budget of the Ministry of Education, a unit is put at N2m in the market while the market reality will show that N200, 000 will be efficiently utilised to purchase a unit. On the same budget for Works, desktop were listed to cost N1m per unit.
There are however a few noticeable exceptions which are to be commended where capital expenditures were more or less efficiently appropriated. These include agriculture and rural development that allocates N35.1b to capital and N31.4b to recurrent respectively; water resources, N30.6b and N7.7b; power N59b and N3.3b; transport, N29.3b and N8.1b; works, N100.1b and N28.5b; lands and housing, N12.8b and N5.6 and aviation N26.1b and N6.1b.
The rest of the 42 ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) will spend more on their recurrent than on capital and in some instances the difference is so huge. Here are a few cases: the Ministry of Interior is expected to spend N144.7b in recurrent and just N6.29b on capital; Police formation and commands, N285.5b and N6.79b; Education including UBEC, N443.9b and N49.5b and Health, N216.4b and N46.3b.
(2) INEXPLICABLE BUDGET PRIORITIES AND DISPARITIES
Last year, N90.9m was budgeted for this item; what has happened or expected to happen this year that will propel this level of spending. Yet, this is aside N188.3m to be spent on office stationery and computer consumables (for which N507.9m was budgeted last year).
The education budget is the same. An e.g. is a line budget to procure 15 desktop computers for N30m, which translates to N2m per unit. There is no desktop computer costing over 500,000 naira in the open market. In fact since most of these will be bulk purchases the cost is expected to come down. More importantly, there is no suggestion that what is needed is the highest end of desktop computers.
A peep into the budget for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs brings its own excitement. For instance, there is plan to spend money for the maintenance of plants and generators in several of our foreign missions, including the one in London.
The foreign ministry’s headquarters would part with N201.7m for fumigation and cleaning services during the year. Some others that illustrate the priority dichotomy are highlighted below:
Construction of a VIP Wing at the State House Clinic: N705 Million
Total Capital Budget for Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital: N328 Million
Total capital budget for University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital: N310 Million
Total Capital Budget for NOMA Children Hospital, Sokoto: N 89 M
Total capital budget for The Institute of Child Health, University of Benin Teaching Hospital, and Benin City: Nil
It is clear from the foregoing that to the formulators of the budget, the VIP Wing at the State House clinic is superior in terms of cost, priority and efficient allocation of resources to 2 teaching hospitals, a National Children’s Hospital and a Pediatric Research Institute combined.
(3) DEFENCE AND SECURITY BUDGET
The budget proposal rewards banditry and encourages militancy at the expense of the fighting men and women of the Nigerian military. Set forth below are comparative figures from various elements of the budget associated with defence and national security:
Stipends and Allowances to 30,000 Niger Delta Militants under the Presidential Amnesty Programme: N23.6 Billion (twenty three billion, six hundred million Naira)
Reintegration of Transformed Ex Militants: N35.4 Billion (Thirty Five Billion, Four Hundred Million Naira)
Total Capital Budget for the Nigerian Army: N4.8 Billion (Four Billion, Eight Hundred Million Naira)
Total Capital Budget for the Ministry of Defence Headquarters, Army, Navy and Air Force: N34.2 billion (Thirty Four Billion, Two Hundred Million Naira)
Total capital budget for ALL Police formations and commands: N6 Billion (Six Billion Naira)
4) DISCRETIONARY SPENDING COST INSENSITIVITYThere is too much discretionary spending in the system, which are hard to put in context. E.g. the use of the phrase ‘Welfare packages’, which will gulp as much as N40.4m in the headquarters of the Ministry of Water Resources? This is seen in many places. It is good to note that the said figure is not for the entire ministry and agencies under it, rather for the headquarters. Welfare package typically appears in the budget of every MDA and one wonders who audits this spending.
Other heads of interest demanding explanation include ‘Cleaning and fumigation services’ (for which the Headquarters of the Foreign Affairs Ministry would spend N201.7m and the Niger Delta Ministry will spend N25m on) and ‘Anniversaries and celebrations (for which the Ministry of Women Affairs will spend N71.6m)’. There are also budgetary heads for ‘Printing of security documents’; ‘Printing of non-security documents’; ‘Field and camping materials supplies’ (N4.39m in the Ministry of Women Affairs); ‘Uniforms and other clothing’; ‘Refreshments and meals’ (N16.7m in the Ministry of Women Affairs); ‘Honorarium and sitting allowance’ and ‘consultancy services for budget preparation’
In the State House Headquarters there is a line item to purchase an embalming machine at the cost of N1.65m and a hydraulic post-mortem table at N4m.
General maintenance in the State House will cost N1.19b of which N138.9m will go for motor vehicle and transport equipment maintenance.
N907m will be spent for office and residential building maintenance; N17.4m for office furniture maintenance and N40m to maintain office and IT equipment.
5) THE BUDGET IS FULL OF DISTORTIONSThe budget is full of distortions. In some areas items are simply restated verbatim several times and amounts allocated as many times as they are repeated. In the ministry of Education some university budgets are simply restated. In one case a university budget is simply re-pasted as another university budget.
Also, in the Foreign Affairs ministry budget, there are plans to spend N834.4m to purchase and freight 40 ‘representational cars’ to 40 of our foreign missions. This translates to N20.86m as average cost for the cars. Wouldn’t this cost be reduced if these cars were bought in the locations they are to be used?
Another example in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will suffice. For e.g. there are provisions for office equipment repeated five times and several allocations made for the same item repeatedly and the distortion is compounded by the fact that provisions are made for the same purpose but captured using other framing. In other cases items are included that are not measurable or executable. E.g. the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution will be spending N9m for ‘building democracy as an instrument of peace’.
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The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, has offered whistleblowers between 2.5 per cent and 5 per cent of recovered stolen Nigerian assets held abroad for information that leads to their recovery.
Olukoyede disclosed this on Wednesday while delivering a lecture at the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime in the United Kingdom.
According to him, the ability of EFCC operatives to trace assets, cooperation from the judiciary and access to credible intelligence have played important roles in the commission’s success in securing non-conviction-based forfeiture orders.
He also described the EFCC as having some of the best investigators in the world and stressed the importance of protecting and encouraging whistleblowers.
He said anyone with credible information about stolen Nigerian assets taken or hidden anywhere in the world could receive between 2.5 per cent and 5 per cent of the recovered assets as an incentive, with payment made after the recovery.
Olukoyede further revealed that the EFCC had forfeited cash and assets worth more than $500 million to the Federal Government within the past three years.
He cited several cases involving the recovery and forfeiture of assets, including cases linked to a former Chairman of the Central Bank of Nigeria and a former Attorney-General of the Federation.
The EFCC chairman explained that the commission is legally empowered to seek the forfeiture of suspected proceeds of crime by applying to the High Court for an order. He said the process is similar to procedures used in countries such as Australia and Canada.
Olukoyede also recalled a case involving an aircraft allegedly acquired by an individual who was accused of receiving about $30 million in bribes in connection with a power project. He said the aircraft was forfeited about three months ago and had subsequently been added to the presidential air fleet.
He also referred to a property containing about 753 housing units that was forfeited from a former CBN governor, against whom the EFCC has filed criminal charges in three courts.
Speaking about the immediate past Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, Olukoyede said the EFCC opened an investigation following allegations of abuse of office. He claimed that investigators traced about 57 properties to Malami and that approximately 48 of them had been forfeited.
The EFCC chairman further mentioned the forfeiture of a private university allegedly linked to a director in the Federal Ministry of Health. According to him, the official voluntarily surrendered the property following the commission’s investigation.
Olukoyede said the measures demonstrate the importance of asset tracing, international cooperation, credible intelligence and whistleblower protection in the fight against financial crime and the recovery of stolen public assets.
The Dangote Petroleum Refinery has raised concerns over the growing volume of imported petrol entering Nigeria, warning that it could be forced to export more of its own production if the trend continues.
The refinery said imported Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) made up roughly 43 per cent of the petrol supplied to the Nigerian market in July. It argued that the development was creating serious difficulties for a domestic refinery with the capacity to produce enough fuel for the country.
Dangote Refinery explained that it has maintained sizeable petrol reserves since commencing operations to ensure that consumers across Nigeria have access to a reliable supply. Keeping those reserves, it noted, requires substantial expenditure on storage, transportation and working capital.
However, the refinery said the continued granting of import licences without adequate information about expected import volumes has made it increasingly difficult to determine how much petrol should be produced and stored for the local market.
The company said holding large quantities of petrol becomes financially burdensome when there is no certainty about how much imported fuel will compete for the same market. It therefore considers exporting surplus stocks a more commercially viable option than allowing them to remain in storage indefinitely.
According to the refinery, increased exports in recent months should not be interpreted as evidence that Nigeria lacks sufficient refining capacity. Instead, the exports are being driven by excess stock resulting from unpredictable import volumes.
Dangote Refinery maintained that it remains fully committed to supplying the Nigerian market and has the capacity to meet or surpass the country's petrol requirements. It said its decision to export surplus products was aimed at managing inventory efficiently and avoiding unnecessary storage and financing expenses.
The refinery also warned that market disruptions caused by excessive imports could make it harder for domestic refiners to accurately predict demand. Any resulting supply problems, it said, should not automatically be blamed on local refineries.
It urged regulators and other industry stakeholders to improve transparency around petrol imports and strengthen coordination within the downstream petroleum market.
The company argued that policies that give greater support to domestic refining would help Nigeria reduce its dependence on imported fuel, conserve foreign exchange, strengthen energy security and maximise the economic benefits of investments in local refining infrastructure.
Dangote Refinery said it remains prepared to supply the country but stressed that a more predictable and transparent market environment is necessary for efficient production and inventory management.
Business
In The Spotlight
A group of heartless carpetbaggers have captured the Nigerian state, and it appears that they, their biological and political descendants, will hold the levers of government and access to Nigeria’s commonwealth for a long time to come.
When you consider news reports of how previous and current state actors steal public funds, buy choice properties in the toniest districts of Nigeria’s major cities, acquire private jets, and even establish private universities, you wonder if some people have more than two heads, to adopt a Yoruba phrase.
Either because of an inability to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number of Nigerian citizens, or by intention, the political elite have kept the people poor, causing them to depend on the largeness of heart of the same elite to meet their existential needs.
That explains why poor, downtrodden, and unconnected Nigerians eagerly collect crumbs of measly N5,000, rice, gari and whatever else the politicians offer to obtain their election votes or acquiescence after rigging the elections.
When watching an economically disadvantaged individual tell a politician who is seeking to become a legislator the good news that his wife just had a new baby, and he needed to prepare for the naming ceremony, it felt like the oppressed poor were enabling his oppressor to further oppress him.
It was like the classic case of Stockholm syndrome, of victims collaborating with their “captors” to cement the oppressive stranglehold that they already had over the state and the commonwealth of the nation, thus unwittingly arresting their own future development.
A running mate to a former governorship candidate in a Southwestern state hilariously regaled Nigerians with the story of how constituents would have raided all the alcoholic drinks in his refrigerator in the early hours of the morning, even before he woke from the hectic campaign tour of the previous day.
The political elite have practically cornered the Nigerian state for themselves, children, tribesmen and acolytes, and have devised a way to admit only those that they have found to be loyal, or pliable, into their rank of oppressors.
The oppression of the citizens of Nigeria is easily accomplished because of the high illiteracy level amongst the poor masses. The use of the weapon of illiteracy is more evident in Northern Nigeria, whose political leaders somehow turn a blind eye to the illiteracy and underdevelopment of their people.
In 2024, UNICEF revealed that out of Nigeria’s 18.3 million out-of-school children, about 12.1 million, or 66 per cent, were resident in the Northwest and Northeast regions. Yet, instead of expanding educational facilities and opportunities, some Northern governors are arranging mass weddings for children who are hardly out of their teen years.
And this is not to deny the weaponisation of illiteracy even in Obafemi Awolowo’s Western Region, which is regarded as the Athens of Nigeria, after its pre-Independence head start of free, universal and compulsory primary school education.
As if he had a premonition that Nigeria’s so-called democrats would eventually compromise education, to the detriment of the lowest and marginalised masses, that Karl Marx described as the “lumpen proletariat”, French political thinker Montesquieu argued a long time ago that “It is in a republican government that the whole power of education is required.”
Western Nigeria’s free education scheme was gradually abandoned from the days of the Second Republic when some Yoruba members of President Shehu Shagari’s political party knocked it off its bottom with the argument that “qualitative” education was better than “free” education.
It is more than a shame that a free, universal and compulsory primary school education scheme was abandoned under President Shagari, who not only was a trained teacher, but had a career as a teacher before his political career.
Awolowo had warned Nigeria’s political elite with the following quip: “The children of the poor that you failed to educate will not let your children sleep peacefully.” The insecurity that currently occurs in nearly every part of Nigeria only drives Awolowo’s point home.
Probably the realm of the Nigerian republic that has been most complicit with the carpetbagger political elite is the media, whose members either serve the elites as press secretaries who kill media brushfires, or editors who either run planted stories, or spike stories that the politicians do not want published.
The media is so compromised that it can hardly perform those responsibilities assigned to it by Section 22 of the Nigerian Constitution, which are to “be free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in (Chapter II of the Constitution) and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people.”
Some apologists have argued on behalf of the media that the political elite have so run the economy aground that the media, which can only thrive as commercial enterprises within Nigeria’s quasi-capitalist economy, cannot stay afloat, especially with the devastating inroads that the digital media are making into their audience, advertising revenue and profit.
The absence of regional economies, the argument goes, prevents the emergence of regional newspapers that can thrive on advertising revenues from regional companies, the way it obtains in the economies of North America and Western Europe. Many Nigerian newspapers, that are essentially regional, often pretend to be national to receive advertising revenue from companies whose market is national.
Two other collaborators of the political elite are the election management agencies and the judiciary at both the national and sub-national levels of government. The conspiracy between these agencies and the political elite is almost like that of Siamese twins conjoined by the belly button.
After the election management agencies may have deliberately bungled (especially) governorship and legislative house elections, and declared false reports, the losers, who felt that they won the election, would then approach the temple of justice, with significant financial inducement to ask for justice(?).
From that point on, the justice that both contestants hope to corruptly obtain could swing according to the heft of the naira in the Ghana-must-go bag that they will be hauling into the chambers of the denizens of the corrupted judiciary.
Thus, the “award” of electoral justice is “a matter of cash”, to quote Basi, the protagonist of “Basi & Co”, the television sitcom produced by environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who himself was denied justice from the judiciary that served the regime of General Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s most notorious military dictator.
In Nigeria, the lines of separation of powers that demarcate the duties of the three arms of government –the legislative, executive and judiciary– and the checks and balances that empower each arm to check the others have become almost irredeemably blurred.
As legislators use constituency projects as a ploy to carry out the functions of the executive, the president issues executive orders that are essentially legislative in nature. Though the judiciary does not perform the duties of the other arms, it fails to check them as it indulgently winks at their excesses.
If those who are regarded as Nigeria’s political elite really know what is in their enlightened self-interest and would like to protect the future of their descendants from what Thomas Hobbes described as a short, brutish and nasty existence, they will use their current privilege to correct the evil they have done to Nigerians.
They must urgently redeem the future before it delivers violence against their children.
By Lekan Sote
In The Spotlight
Lagos alone is worth more than Botswana, Namibia, Rwanda and Mauritius combined.
Let that sink in.
With an economy of N41.17tn — about $102bn in 2021 — Lagos State dwarfed the entire gross domestic products of four countries. Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Delta and Bayelsa sit on oil wealth that funds nations. Ogun, Anambra and Imo churn out goods, services and commerce that would make small economies jealous.
By the numbers, Nigeria’s states are giants.
But walk the streets of Lagos, and you will still find mothers cooking with firewood. Drive through Port Harcourt, and you will see communities drinking water polluted by the same oil that makes the state’s GDP glow. Visit Umuahia, Abeokuta, or Minna and ask the average trader what “trillion-naira economy” means to her dinner table.
The answer is: nothing.
That viral video telling you “10 Nigerian states are richer than countries” is both true and a lie. True, because the 2021 BudgIT figures don’t lie — Lagos at N41.17trn, Rivers at N7.96trn, and so on. A lie, because those numbers are GDP, not prosperity. They measure how much economic activity happens _in_ a place, not how much of it reaches the people who live there.
A country with $7,778 GDP per capita, like Botswana, will still feed its citizens better than a state with $102bn in total output but $2,058 per capita, like Nigeria. A state can host a port, an oil rig, and a tech hub, yet fail to build a hospital that works.
So, the real question isn’t “Which state is bigger than which country?”
The real question, and the one our governors should lose sleep over, is this: When your economy is bigger than a nation, why are your people still living like they have nothing?
In this edition of The Bottomline, we follow the money from GDP to the gutter — and ask why Nigeria’s trillion-naira states have not become trillion-naira lives.
The viral numbers are not new. They were lifted straight from BudgIT’s 2022 State of States report and reflected 2021 estimates: Lagos at N41.17tn, followed by Rivers at N7.96tn, Akwa Ibom at N7.77tn, Imo at N7.68tn, Delta at N6.19tn, Anambra at N5.14tn, Ondo at N5.10tn, Ogun at N5.03tn, Bayelsa at N4.63tn and Niger at N4.58tn.
The trick is in the timing. To pitch those 2021 figures against 2025 country GDPs is statistical fraud. Nigeria has since rebased. The NBS moved the base year from 2010 to 2019, and the whole map shifted. Lagos itself has moved on: its 2025 _Lagos Economic Development Update_ puts the state at N43.06tn in 2023, with forecasts of N54.77tn for 2024 and N66.47tn for 2025. Those are projections, not fresh NBS post-rebasing observations, but they tell you the direction: up.
There is no debate that Lagos is Nigeria’s economic engine. From a colonial port to federal capital until 1991, it never lost momentum. Today, trade, manufacturing, ports, telecoms, tech, entertainment, real estate and finance all cluster in just 3,345 square kilometres. Compare that footprint to Botswana’s 581,730 sq km, Namibia’s 825,615 sq km, Rwanda’s 26,338 sq km, and Mauritius’ 2,040 sq km. Yet in 2021, Lagos’ $102 billion economy was several times larger than Botswana’s $19.9bn, Namibia’s $15.1bn, Rwanda’s $16.4bn, and Mauritius’ $16.2bn, according to 2025 World Bank figures.
That comparison is legitimate. The conclusion people draw from it is not.
GDP tells you how much value was produced in a territory. It does not tell you who owns it, who earns it, or whether the roads work, the lights stay on, or the hospital has drugs.
A state can run a trillion-naira economy and still have mothers boiling water on firewood. A country can have a smaller GDP and deliver a better life. Look at the per capita numbers: Botswana at $7,778, Namibia at $5,309, Mauritius at $11,819. Nigeria sits at about $2,058. Even Rwanda, at just $773 per capita, has pushed its $3-a-day poverty rate down to 38.6 per cent — proof that size is not destiny.
The oil states expose the fraud most brutally. Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Delta and Bayelsa rank high because petroleum inflates their GDP. But oil wealth does not flow into state coffers in equal measure, and it certainly does not flow into household wallets. BudgIT’s own fiscal sustainability index proves this. In 2022, Rivers topped overall fiscal performance despite Lagos having the biggest economy. A big economy without revenue discipline, jobs, and services is just a billboard.
Nigeria does not have a GDP problem. We have a translation problem.
We have pockets of enormous economic power. Lagos. Rivers. Akwa Ibom. Ogun. Anambra. Delta. The output is real. What is missing is the bridge between that output and ordinary life.
Until economic activity creates real jobs, until IGR rises and addiction to federal allocation falls, until infrastructure supports production instead of strangling it, those trillion-naira figures will remain a cruel joke.
So let the video go viral. Let Lagos be “bigger than Botswana”.
But governors, commissioners, and citizens should ask only one question:
If my state can outproduce a country, why can’t it out-deliver a decent life for the people who call it home?
Until we answer that, we are not rich. We are just big.
By Raphael Mbamalu