Ogun State government has refuted BudgIT Foundation’s widely publicised report on internally generated revenue across the 36 states of the federation, saying the group got the state’s financial status wrong.
In a letter to the foundation’s director by the state Commissioner for Finance, Dapo Okubadejo, the government described BudgIT Foundation’s ranking of Ogun State as having an IGR of N78.17billion for 2021 as inaccurate and misleading.
It provided the state ’s Audited report from the Joint Tax Board and the state’s Audited Financial Statement, which put the state’s IGR for 2021 at N100.9 billion.
The government demanded a retraction of the said publication, which it said had caused the state reputational damage.
Its position was corroborated by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, which, on Tuesday, released the correct IGR figures for Ogun State, confirming the efforts by the Dapo Abiodun-led administration to put the economy on a sound footing and make Ogun Nigeria’s top investment destination.
According to NBS, in its latest report, the 36 states and the FCT recorded IGR to the tune of N1.89 trillion in 2021, against the 2020 figure of N1.56 trillion, a 22 per cent year-on-year positive growth.
According to the report, Ogun, which grew its IGR from N50.6bn in 2020 to N100.7bn in 2021, performed excellently on its IGR index, being only out-performed by Lagos State, Nigeria’s economic capital (N753.3bn); the Federal Capital Territory (FCT N131.9bn) and Rivers State, a top oil-producing state (N123.3bn).
Notable industrialists and investors, such as Tony Elumelu and Aliko Dangote, have ranked Ogun as Nigeria’s most industrialized state, which has benefited massively from Governor Abiodun’s experience as a board room guru before his foray into politics.