The Federal Government is poised to lose $10 million from a $103 million fiscal governance and institutions credit from the World Bank, due to failed audits, delays in launching a national budget portal, and lagging implementation of a revenue assurance system.
According to the World Bank’s June 2025 restructuring paper addressed to the Ministry of Finance, the credit facilitated by the International Development Association is set to close on June 30 this year.
“The FMF has requested cancellation of $0.9 million of unused funds for Technical Assistance (TA) and $9.5 million, which is the amount allocated to 10 performance-based conditions (PBCs) which will not be achieved by the close of the project on June 30, 2025,” the document reads.
One of the key cancellations involves a $4 million audit of the Federal Inland Revenue Service and the Nigeria Customs Service, which “did not meet the requisite international auditing standards,” according to the report.
“These intermediate results (IRs) to be implemented by the OAuGF were assessed as not achieved by the independent verification agent (IVA) because the reports submitted for verification did not meet the requisite international auditing standards,” the World Bank said.
Other cancelled obligations include: $1 million allocated for the deployment of a National Budget Portal aimed at publishing federal and at least 20 state capital budgets but the Bureau of Finance (BOF) “did not submit evidence of achievement for the IR.
“$4.5 million for implementing the Revenue Assurance and Billing System (RABS), where two IRs were not met because only 27 out of 55 government-owned enterprises had set up Treasury Single Account (TSA) sub-accounts, and there was no automated flow of foreign-generated revenues to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
“The remaining IRs 2.7–2.9 will not be achieved before the Project closes because of delays due to: Contract management issues: the FMF is in the process of expanding the RABS implementation consortium to include another vendor
“Pending finalization of the indemnity letter requested by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from the FMF to ensure that the CBN is not liable for any potential errors arising from the automatic transfers of funds from the TSA sub-accounts of FGOEs to the CRF.
“Given these delays, RABS implementation is expected to be completed in August 2025, which will be after FGIP closes.”
Despite setbacks, the World Bank report highlighted positive achievements: non-oil revenue reached 153 percent of the 2024 target up from 64.9 percent in 2018, thanks to exchange rate unification, improved tax administration (TaxProMax), and automation of revenue remittances.
“However, capital expenditure execution remained low at 50 percent against a 65 percent goal, and monitoring and evaluation was rated “moderately unsatisfactory.
“On a brighter note, progress included 10 reconciled economic and fiscal datasets (exceeding a 6-target), a rollout of the electronic register of beneficial owners by the Corporate Affairs Commission (now covering about 40 percent of businesses), a national asset registry, and enhanced financial reporting by the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI).”
The report concluded that the final disbursement is expected to be $96.04 million, or 93 percent of the initial $103 million credit.