Comparative Budgets

The issue of "marginalization" is one of the biggest sources of political bitterness in the federal republic.

I do not like adopted cliched and standardized explanations for why things happen in Nigeria (a big reason why we never solve our problems is we always identify the wrong things as the problems). With that said, there is definitely a degree of distrust between citizens as individuals and as members of sociocultural collectives.

It dismays me when I converse with intelligent, well-meaning citizens who properly identify deficiencies in our federal republic, but who, when asked to say what they thought was the source of the deficiency, would immediately blame a particular ethnic group, region or religion.

It is not just a national or pan-federal phenomenon. The same dynamic plays out within regions, within states, within ethnic communities, and even within towns and villages. It is like there is an interlocking, concentric web of finger-pointing.

Everybody is just so sure that "those people" are trying to monopolize resources by monopolizing political power.

Underlying this is the belief that Nigeria has sufficient money (from crude oil) to satisfy the wants and desires of everyone ... if only "those people" were not eating all the money and marginalizing your own people.

The most common variant of this belief (a variant repeated by foreigners as much as by ourselves) is the suggestion that if there was no corruption, the federal government would have enough money to do blah, blah, blah. But this is a lie. If nobody stole a single kobo of federal revenue, and all of it was spent in the most efficient, effective and expedited manner possible ... it would not be enough to provide the requisite social services for over a 100 million people.

Bear in mind, it is not like the infrastructural foundation or societal platform for sufficient services exists; we would literally have to build support structures from scratch and then and only then begin to fund the actual services. But you know what? Even if those support structures did exist, the federal budget is too small. The state government budgets are too small. The local government areas should not even exist, as they would be irrelevant even if they were properly resourced (which they are not).

I wish people would abandon the belief that Nigeria is rich. We are potentially rich, but we are not rich. Indeed, the belief that we are rich is a huge stumbling block to our development. You do not get the sense that we are willing or even interested in fighting for the sorts of reforms, restructuring and transformation that will unlock our wealth .... but instead busy ourselves with fighting over what we think is a large enough "national cake". As a sometime acquaintance of mine once said, "Nigeria is a poor country that likes acting as though it was a rich country."

But you know what really bothers me?

We are actually one of the wealthier countries in Africa! Which kind of means that our neighbours on the continent are even further away from where they should be than we are.

Take these comparisions:

REPUBLIC OF UGANDA

Population: 33 million.
2010/2011 National Budget: $3.12 billion (UG-Shillings 7.024 trillion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $94.55

REPUBLIC OF SENEGAL

Population: 13.7 million
2011 Budget: $3.9 billion (CFA 2.1 trillion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $284.67

LAGOS STATE

Population: 9 million
2011 State Budget: $2.97 billion (=N=445.1 billion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $330.00

RIVERS STATE

Population: 5.1 million
Total State Revenue 2007-2010: $5.6 billion (=N=845 billion)
Average Annual State Revenue: $1.9 billion
Budget Expense Per Capita: $372.55

The above data is interesting (and explained by the fact that the GDP of Lagos State is larger than the GDP of Senegal and about 75% of the GDP of Uganda, while the GDP of Rivers State is roughly equal to that of Senegal and about 50% of the Ugandan GDP -- measured by Purchasing Price Parity).

Nevertheless, the budget of Lagos is insufficient for a city-state of that size; compare it not to budgets of similar-sized cities in similarly poor countries, but to similar-sized cities in the middle-income and high-income world. We complain a lot about Lagos, but if you want Lagos to be in the same ranks as those cities, we need to expand the state's economy dramatically (and with it the state's budget). And regardless of the utterances of irredentists, the economic fortunes of Lagos State are tied up with the economic fortunes of the federal republic; the richer Nigeria becomes, the richer Lagos (as the key commercial/financial centre) becomes.

Still, there is a part of me that expects to see the entire infrastructure of a Uganda (including electricity) present in Lagos State. If we can do at least that, then we could know that we were spending the little we had in as efficient a way as possible.

Most Nigerian states are not as financially endowed as Lagos and Rivers, though I rather suspect these states' GDP could sustain higher budget expenditures if they did a better job of collecting what we Nigerians have termed I.G.R. (i.e. Internally Generated Revenue). And (before anyone accuses me of condescension or arrogance) there are several African countries with national budgets greater than those of Nigeria's states.

REPUBLIC OF GHANA

Population: 24 million
2011 Budget: $8.7 billion (GHS 12.67 billion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $362.5 (roughly equivalent to the per capita budget spending of Rivers State)

REPUBLIC OF KENYA

Population: 39 million
2010/2011 Budget: $12.35 billion (KEN-Shillings 998.8 billion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $316.67 (roughly equivalent to the per capita budget spending of Lagos State)

BAYELSA STATE

Population: 1.7 million
2011 Budget: $1.08 billion (=N=161.3 billion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $635.30 (the highest per capita spending number on this admittedly brief list)

KATSINA STATE

Population: 5.8 million
2011 State Budget: $670 million (=N=99.9 billion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $115.5

OYO STATE

Population: 5.6 million
2011 Budget: $960 million (=N=144.4 billion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $171.43

ANAMBRA STATE

Population: 4.2 million
2011 Budget: $444 million (=N=66.676 billion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $105.7

ENUGU STATE

Population: 3.2 million
2011 Budget: $443 million (=N=66.4 billion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $138.44

FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA

Population: Somewhere between 90 million and 150 million. Lets say it is 120 million.
2011 Budget: $30.4 billion (=N=4.56 trillion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $253.33 (on the one hand, this is lower than Ghana and Kenya, about on par with Senegal ... and on the other hand, Nigeria's three-tier structure means this expense is in addition to the State government budgets listed above, essentially raising the overall budget-per-capita figures).
Fiscal Deficit in first nine months of 2010: $4.84 billion (=N=726 billion)