On Thursday, an online newspaper reported that the federal government had fallen short of its projected first-quarter revenue by 745 percent after recording a N318 billion inflow between January and March.
The report cited Oluwatoyin Madein, the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), at a hearing organised by the House of Representatives Committee on Finance to monitor revenue inflow from federal government agencies.
“The federal government suffered a massive budget deficit in the first quarter of 2024, missing its revenue target of N2.69 trillion by a whopping 745 percent,” wrote the newspaper in the report.
Madein, who was represented by Felix Ogundaro, the director of revenue and investment at the AGF’s office, was quoted as saying that total revenue inflow into the federal government’s accounts was N318.5 billion, against the N2.691 trillion in the budget.
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On Friday, Kalu Aja, a financial education instructor, posted a snapshot of the newspaper’s headline on X and made a comparison between Zenith Bank’s first quarter revenue and the figure quoted by the AGF.
His post suggested that the private company generated more revenue than the federal government in the first quarter of the year.
Aja has made two posts with the image of the headline of this report. As of the time of FIJ’s report, more than 250,000 have viewed these posts.
CLAIMS:
- The federal government missed its target revenue by 745 percent in the first quarter of 2024
- The federal government projected N2.691 trillion in revenue for the first quarter of 2024.
VERIFICATION: To verify the independent revenue projection of the federal government in Q1 2024, FIJ obtained the document containing the total projected revenue for ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) and government-owned enterprises (GOEs).
According to the document, the federal government projected that it would earn N2.26 trillion in independent revenue for the entire 2024 fiscal year. It would therefore be impossible for the projected revenue for the first quarter alone to be N2.69 trillion.
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VERDICT: The claim that the federal government projected N2.691 trillion in revenue for Q1 is misleading. Also, the claim that the federal government fell short of its projected Q1 revenue by 745 percent is false.
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