Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on Thursday urged the federal government to give Lagos a unique economic status.
The Governor, who called the state a “national asset”, said that all Nigerians, regardless of geography, benefit in one way or another from the development of Lagos.
During the presentation of the 2023 Budget Estimates at the Lagos State Legislative Assembly in the Alausa ward of Ikeja, the state capital, Sanwo-Olu made this known.
He presented the budget forecast of N1,692,670,759,894 with Recurrent as N759,958,569,792 (45%) and Capital being N932,712,190,102 (55%).
Dubbed the “Continuity Budget”, the governor said that its effective implementation will benefit everyone.
He said: “Lagos continues to experience increased pressure on social services due to unhindered migration from other parts of the country.
“It is for this reason that I have always sought and will continue to reiterate the need to grant Lagos special status as a national asset.
“Lagos is too big for this country to allow it to fail. Lagos is too strategic for us not to see that the health of Lagos is the health of this country, that the benefits of Lagos transcend any region, part or region. extent of this country.
“As the microsome of the whole country, Lagos deserves all the support it can get nationally.”
The governor has already demanded that Lagos be granted special economic status. In June 2021, Sanwo-Olu asked the National Assembly to take into account the special economic status of Lagos when rewriting the 1999 Constitution.
Also in October of the same year, he argued that the special status of Lagos had multiplicative implications for the whole nation and wanted a 1% stake in the fund allocation mechanism.
In addition, Sanwo-Olu urged the Revenue Mobilization Tax and Allowance Commission (RMAFC) to change the revenue sharing formula to be 34% for the Federal Government, including 1% for the Territory of the Federal Capital (FCT) of Abuja, 42% for the state governments. , 23% for local authorities and 1% for Lagos State (special status).
Currently, the federal government gets 52.68%, the states get 26.72% while the local governments get 20.60%.
Lagos, which has a population of nearly 20 million, generated the most Internal Revenue (IGR) in 2021 at N753.46 billion, followed by the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), which generated N131.92 billion. of naira.