With just three weeks to the end of the year, the Rivers State House of Assembly yesterday approved a 2015 supplementary budget of N104,287,285,108 billion for Governor Nyesom Wike.
Gov. Wike is yet to send a budget proposal to the state assembly for 2016. His counterpart in Ekiti, Ayo Fayose, has already sent his 2016 budget proposal to the Ekiti assembly with a total expenditure of N67 billion, which is N37 billion less than what Rivers will spend for the remainder of 2015.
The difference between the two budgets show the gulf between some of Nigeria’s states. With the supplementary budget of N104.3 billion for Rivers, the state’s total budget for 2015 is about N442 billion, while that of Ekiti for 2015 was less than 20 per cent of that at N80.9 billion. It would be even less in 2016.
The difference between the two states is not hard to explain though. Whereas Rivers state gets almost double what Ekiti gets from the federation account monthly (N4.04bn vs N2.64bn), it also gets an average of N6.49bn monthly as its 13 per cent share of derivation as an oil producing state while Ekiti gets nothing. Rivers state also generates far more internally generated revenue monthly than Ekiti.
The Rivers supplementary budget passed yesterday is to enable Gov Wike execute “some capital projects”, which led the PDP dominated assembly to give it express approval. All 22 lawmakers present voted in support of the budget.
Speaker of the Assembly, Ikwunyi Owaji-Ibani, directed the Assembly’s Clerk to send an approval letter to the governor on the passed budget.
The scoop
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