Also, only Lagos and Ogun States in the South West are able to meet their monthly recurrent bills while in the North West, Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina, Kebbi, Kaduna and Kano are able to meet this obligation leaving out only Jigawa.
In the South-South, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Edo, are able to meet their monthly recurrent expenditures while giants in federation account allocation like Delta, Rivers and Bayelsa are not able to meet their obligations.
In the South East, only Abia State is not able to meet this obligation while no state in the North Central is able to also meet its monthly recurrent expenditures.
“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 exception of Lagos, Rivers, Delta, Ogun and Akwa Ibom State”, it noted.
For fiscal sustainability, Lagos is followed by Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Kano states.
And despite being ravaged by terrorism, Yobe and Borno states ranked higher in fiscal sustainability at numbers 22 and 26 than Oyo, Osun, Ekiti and many of their relatively peaceful counterparts.
“It is a recurring theme to see states in South-South Nigeria running high recurrent bills, mainly driven by the high revenues earned due to the 13% derivation.