Since 2015, BudgIT has issued annual editions of the State of States Report, a deep-dive research into issues of fiscal
sustainability of Nigerian states. While Nigerian states are not out of the woods due to the sub-optimal federalism
system that Nigeria practices, the recent one-off payments such as the Paris Club refund, refund for federal road projects to states, budget support funds as well as loans by the Central Bank of Nigeria have helped many states with fiscal challenge to mildly recover.
However, the issues continue to persist around the weak economies of states mostly tied to informal trade and
skeletal industrial output with the exception of Lagos, Rivers, Delta, Ogun and Akwa Ibom State. Of a truth, most Nigerian states have still not figured out how to harness their collective strengths and establish single focus investment products, thereby becoming fulcrum of productivity and not just FAAC distribution centers.
In the 2019 report, we made mild changes to our methodology, thereby using actual expenditure for the state,
reducing the probability of the unreliability of inflated budgeted figures especially for expenditure items. BudgIT
worked with state governments on accessing the audited reports for the 36 states in Nigeria. We are working to ensure that our fiscal index is more governed by reality than budget figures by states.
