Any serious conversation about Nigeria’s states should begin with the development indices. The National Bureau of Statistics’ Multidimensional Poverty Index found 133 million Nigerians, 63 percent of the population, poor across health, education, living standards and work. The crucial finding is the spread. Poverty ranges from 27 percent in Ondo to 91 percent in Sokoto. Rural poverty, at 72 percent, is nearly double the urban rate of 42 percent. Roughly 86 million of the poor live in the North. Every dimension the index measures is, in Nigeria’s constitutional design, substantially a state and local government responsibility. Development is a subnational variable. The index is a scorecard of subnational government.
That scorecard makes the new fiscal numbers hard to ignore. According to the monthly disbursement reports of the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, combined state and local government allocations rose from ₦5.14 trillion in 2022, the last full year before the reforms, to ₦13.22 trillion in 2025, an increase of 157 percent. Lagos moved from ₦307 billion to ₦996 billion, Kano from ₦204 billion to ₦561 billion, Katsina from ₦148 billion to ₦406 billion, Jigawa from ₦132 billion to ₦352 billion, and Enugu from ₦105 billion to ₦275 billion. No state’s 2025 allocation was less than roughly double its 2022 level. The money to confront development has arrived where development is decided. The question is what states should do with it.
