Comparative Budgets Part 2

Like any good Nigerian film, I have to supply a "Part Two" don't I?

But seriously, this is an addendum to my earlier post on the 2011 Budgets of our federal and state governments.

KANO STATE

Population: 9.4 million
2011 State Budget: $730 million (=N=109.5 billion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $77.66

This is shockingly low, both as an absolute number and as a per capita statistic. Business Day is the most reliable source of Nigerian business/economic/financial news, but could they have made a typographical error?

I am sure someone will raise the old argument about census and population, but that does not affect the conclusion here. I am on record as saying I think Nigeria's population is not as high as 150 million, and also on record as saying I believe EVERY state's population has been inflated .... but any and all estimates of Kano State's "real" population (be they good-faith or with malign intent) would still leave you facing the reality of a $730 million state budget, and consequently a per capita spending statistic that will still be shockingly low.

For the record, the per capita statistic for the other states I've mentioned in my 2011 "Comparative Budgets" posts are (in ascending order):

Katsina: $115
Anambra: $106
Enugu: $138
Oyo: $171
Nigeria (federal budget): $253
Lagos: $330
Rivers: $373
Bayelsa: $635

(See raw numbers in "Part 1" of "Comparative Budgets").

These are not particularly high numbers (there is only a $29 difference between Anambra and Kano, for instance), though you would expect Lagos and Rivers States (acting in consort with the supplementary federal spending statistic) to at least have more impressive results from public spending than and Uganda, especially since they have smaller geographic spaces to deal with.

Mind you, being better than Uganda is a different proposition from being sufficient. As I have said before on this blog, the problem with the "Giant of Africa" ideology is that it permits us to be satisfied with being the biggest of the small, the strongest of the weak, the quickest of the slow. We should aspire to be even with the global juggernauts, and on that basis we are very far away from where we want to be. I mean, it is great and all that the Falcons always win the African Women's Cup and the Eagles always finish in the top three at the Nations Cup, but these achievements start to pale somewhat when you realize we are cannon-fodder at the World Cup and Women's World Cup.