Charles Abuede
The severe impact of the coronavirus pandemic has brought to bear an adverse effect on the revenue generation power of the Nigerian government which over the past months has recorded a tepid growth in its total collected revenues across the states of the federation.
According to the recent data collected by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday morning show that the total 2020 Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) by the 36 states of the federation contracted marginally by -1.93 per cent year on year to N1.31 trillion from the N1.33 trillion generated in 2019. The decline is a result of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic which affected revenue generation by states across the federation.
According to the data published by the national statistics office, the total revenue generated by the 36 states of the federation including the federal capital territory comprise of N851.7 billion from the pay as you earn (PAYE), revenue from direct assessment in the year was N37.06 billion, road and other taxes amounting to N28.39 billion and N170.49 billion respectively. As a result, the total tax recovered during the year amounted to N1.09 trillion while the revenue from government’s ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) were put at N218.39 billion.
A cursory analysis of the data revealed that the highest revenues were recorded in Lagos (N418.9bn) with a total share of 32.08 per cent of the total revenue generated; following the log was Rivers State with N117.18 billion and the FCT with N92.06 billion or 7.05 per cent of the total while the lowest revenue generated was recorded in Yobe (N7.77bn), Taraba (N8.11bn) and Adamawa (N8.33bn) states respectively with 0.6 per cent, 0.62 per cent and 0.64 per cent apiece.
Also, the highest year on year percentage growth in revenue generation was recorded in Kebbi state with 87.02 per cent, Ebonyi state with 82.3 per cent and Oyo state with 42.2 per cent and on the other hand, the lowest growth was recorded in Benue state with a marginally negative growth of -41.38 per cent, Sokoto and Kwara states also recorded negative growth in the generated revenues by -37.93 per cent and -36.03 per cent respectively.
Elsewhere, the total internally generated revenue during the year 2020 when broken down in accordance to the amount collected during each of the four quarters show that a total of N362.38 billion was generated in the first three months of 2020 which declined to N269.88 billion in the second quarter as a result of the lockdown rules by the government which hampered the revenue generation power of most Nigerian states resulting from the coronavirus. As a result of the easing of the restrictive measures earlier imposed, there was a 0.98 decline in the amount collected between the third and final quarters of 2020 to N335.25 billion from N338.57 billion in the previous quarter.
However, there was a -3.16 year on year growth in the N335.25 billion generated between the last quarter of 2020 and the corresponding quarter of 2019. Meanwhile, in the fourth quarter of 2020, the revenue collection report by the NBS put it that the government ministries, department and agencies paid a total of N72.1 billion or 12.0 per cent of the total N335.25billion into the revenue coffers while the total taxes amounted to N263.2 billion which is comprised of N207.33 billion in form of pay as you earn (PAYE) or 34.6 per cent of the total while collections from direct assessment, road and other taxes were at N9.50 billion, N7.63 billion and N38.68 billion respectively.
