Lagos remains the most affected state in the federation as thirty- six states were forced to surrender a staggering N78bn allocations to pay off their external debts, data from the National Bureau of Statistics has revealed.
The figures were captured in the bureau’s Federation Account Allocation Committee Disbursement reports.
With a deduction of about N23.61bn in 2022 for external debt servicing, Lagos led the rest of the states in Nigeria, while Kaduna and Cross River followed with N10.25bn and N7.56bn deductions, respectively.
Oyo, Rivers, Ogun, and Edo were also among the states hit by the deductions, with N4.27bn, N2.74bn, N2.62bn, and N2.15bn deducted from them, respectively.
Borno, Delta, and Zamfara were the least affected states, with N309.79m, N417.54m, and N417.96m deducted from their allocations, respectively.
The monthly breakdown shows the deductions throughout the year were fixed at N6.3 billion except for January and February, when about N7.66bn was deducted each.
With a total sum of N1.58 trillion (N1,581,504,485,760.87), the six states of the South-West are topping the list of geo-political zones in the country with the highest domestic debt burden.
The 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) piled a total of N5.33 trillion (N5,337,751,456,173.93) domestic debt as of December 31, 2022, based on the latest debt data released by the Debt Management Office (DMO).
The domestic debt data report is usually generated from the signed-off submissions received from the 36 states of the federation and the FCT.
The South-West is trailed by the South-South region with a debt burden of N1, 203 trillion (N1, 203,189577,899.87) and North-East with N681.833 billion (N681,833,793,907.342).