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The latest audit report of Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has revealed that the Federal Government denied the National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA) of its statutory share of the Ecology fund to the tune of 12.6 Billion naira from 2012 to 2016.
Two separate audit reports by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative have revealed the Nigerian government diverted a whopping sum of N908.63 billion meant for the Natural Resource Development in ten years.
An analysis of the National Bureau of Statistics’ (NBS) Gross Domestic Output figures has shown that Nigeria’s agro-allied industry has continuously been on the decline for most of the past thirty-eight years. The output from the industry has fallen from N5,100 billion in 1981 to N4,598 billion in 2018. These figures show that the capacity of the agro-allied industry to process agriculture produce has been reducing even though agricultural production is increasing.
Nigeria found it difficult to squeeze out N2.45 Trillion which represents 23.7% of its 2020 budget owing to the Nigeria’s debt profile of over N24 Trillion. Its crude oil reserves of 36 billion barrels (36,972 x 1,000,000) is ranked second largest in Africa, the eighth largest among OPEC nation and the 10th largest in the world.
While government and stakeholders continue to lament the challenge of paucity of funds to recruit more policemen to scale up policing and security in the country, revenue estimated at one hundred and thirty five billion naira (N135 billion), generated from attaching police officers to VIPs, banks and other corporate organizations are publicly unaccounted for.
Over 87 million Nigerians live in extreme poverty on less than the equivalent of two dollars a day. Following months of political bickering and threats of strike action by Labour unions, the Nigerian government announced a new monthly minimum wage raise of approximately 66.67 percent from 18,000 Naira (50USD) to 30,000 Naira (83USD). Despite the increase in minimum wage, Nigeria remains the lowest paying country among the emerging economies using the case of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). It is important to note that the values used for the BRICS economies were mostly 2018 estimates as against the 2019 estimates used for Nigeria. The value of 18,000 Naira in 2011 was (120USD) when it was enacted and as such there is a significant difference of about 37 USD in the actual value of the increase. Despite this difference, the government has been struggling with implementing this new wage, which at the least could stimulate aggregate demand and ultimately growth.
Whatever happens to the VAT increase, the governments at the federal, states and local governments need to eschew those four cover up tales and embrace these two sobering truths. Employing ingenious macroeconomic policies and consistent fiscal discipline is the way to make any tax regime work for the overall good of the country.
The majority of Nigeria’s senior citizens may die without benefitting from pensions. An analysis of the Pension Asset and Membership Data and the Labour force statistics reveal over 90 per cent of Nigerian workers are not on any pension scheme.
The Commercial Banks in Nigeria hold the largest value of customers’ deposits among other banking institutions, which include merchant banks, micro-finance banks, and others. Their time and savings deposits made up 97% of all deposits in the banking sector between May and December 2018, showing their gigantic capacity to create money in the economy through credits.
