Governor Umar Bago of Niger State has proposed a N1.2 trillion budget for 2025, nearly double the state’s 2024 budget, despite falling significantly short in revenue generation and expenditure performance this year.

The proposal, made during a state executive council meeting, was disclosed by Abdullberqy Usman Ebbo, the governor’s special assistant, on his X page on Wednesday.

According to Ebbo, the proposed budget allocates N1.01 trillion to capital expenditure and N188.42 billion to recurrent expenditure.

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However, Niger State’s fiscal performance in 2024 tells a rather gloomy story. As of September, the state had achieved only 30.4% of its total budget execution for the year. This is only about N252.3 billion of its proposed expenditure.

Revenue performance stood at 37.6%, with N312.2 billion collected out of projections. Capital expenditure implementation was even weaker at just 26%, which is about N172 billion out of N665 billion.

The state’s internally generated revenue (IGR) has also lagged, with only 37.7% (N29.2 billion) achieved out of its N48.35 billion target. Overhead costs saw an abysmal execution rate of 20.1%, with just N11.4 billion spent out of N45.4 billion.

On a closer look, sector-specific performances are even more concerning. Agriculture, a key sector for the predominantly agrarian state, saw only 7.7% of its allocated funds utilised. This is about N3.4 billion out of N38 billion.

Poverty alleviation efforts fared worse, with just 4.2% implementation rate (N132 million of N3 billion). The health sector performed relatively better but still fell short, using less than 20% (N10 billion out of N44 billion).

In September, Bago promised that his 2025 budget would focus on education and health. Speaking through the Secretary to the State Government, Abubakar Usman, the governor pledged to allocate half of the budget to these sectors.

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The governor said that N1.5 billion would be used for renovating and equipping technical schools in Suleja. He also promised to renovate 534 schools under the World Bank’s Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) programme.

But these promises ring hollow against a backdrop of the poor performance in 2024. In that fiscal year, the education sector received just N5.5 billion of its allocated N29.86 billion by the third quarter.

With that performance at less than three months left in the 2024 fiscal year, the state’s budgetary ambitions look beyond optimistic. They look outright unrealistic.

EQ reported in October that Niger, along with 24 other states, failed to meet its revenue targets for the 2023 fiscal year. Niger’s performance, in particular, was in the 0-10% range.
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