OGUN STATE FAULTS BUDGIT REPORT ON INTERNALLY GENERATED REVENUE, SEEKS RETRACTION OF PUBLICATED FALSEHOOD

Ogun State Government has refuted the BudgIT Foundation’s widely publicized report on Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) across the 36 states of Nigeria titled: “State of States, 2022 Edition” regarding the state’s financial health status.

In a letter to the foundation’s director by the Commissioner for Finance, Dapo Okubadejo, Ogun State government described BudgIT Foundation’s ranking of the state as having an IGR of N78.17 billion 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.

It, therefore, demanded a retraction of the said publication, which it said, had caused the state reputational damage, and a publication of the updated figures and the true ranking of the state on BudgIT Foundation’s website.

Meanwhile, the state government’s position has indeed been 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 Federal Capital Territory (FCT) recorded IGR to the tune of N1.89 trillion in 2021 as against the 2020 figure of N1.56 trillion of IGR in 2020, a 22 percent year-on-year positive growth.

According to the report, Ogun, which grew its IGR from N50.6 billion in 2020 to N100.9 billion in 2021, performed excellently on the IGR index, being only out-performed by Lagos State, Nigeria’s economic capital (N753.3 billion); the Federal Capital Territory (FCT N131.9 billion) and Rivers State, a top oil-producing state (N123.3 billion).