Nigeria’s 36 state governors have thrown their weight behind President Bola Tinubu’s directive mandating the direct remittance of oil and gas revenues into the Federation Account, describing the measure as essential to restoring fiscal clarity and reinforcing constitutional order across all tiers of government.
In a statement issued on Monday by its director of media and strategic communications, Yunusa Tanko Abdullahi, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) said its endorsement was grounded in the reforms’ potential to enhance transparency, predictability and constitutional alignment in the management of oil revenues.
Tinubu signed Executive Order 9 on 13 February 2026, directing that government entitlements under production-sharing and related contracts — including royalty oil, tax oil, profit oil and profit gas — be paid directly into the Federation Account. The order also seeks to clarify regulatory responsibilities within the petroleum sector.
The directive has prompted mixed reactions, with supporters hailing it as a long-overdue clean-up of opaque remittance channels, while critics warn of unintended consequences for industry operations and reforms under the Petroleum Industry Act.
Responding to the debate, the governors stressed that the integrity of Federation Account inflows is “foundational to Nigeria’s fiscal federalism”, noting that oil and gas revenues remain a central pillar of the country’s distributable income.
“As a non-partisan body representing the 36 state governors of the federation, the NGF underscores that the integrity and predictability of Federation Account inflows are foundational to Nigeria’s fiscal federalism,” the statement read.
“Oil and gas revenues remain a central component of the distributable national income. The clarity, transparency, and predictability of those inflows directly affect capital planning, debt sustainability, infrastructure delivery, and public service provision at the federal, state, and local government levels.”
The forum pointed to recent communiqués from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), which it said had revealed persistent gaps between gross revenue collections and final distributable sums — a discrepancy that directly shapes the fiscal capacity of subnational governments.
“When remittance pathways are layered, complex, or difficult to reconcile, fiscal predictability weakens,” the governors said. “That directly affects capital planning cycles across the federation.”
With Nigeria’s population now estimated at more than 220 million, the forum argued that states are at the frontline of delivering education, primary healthcare, infrastructure, security and economic opportunity. More consistent and transparent revenue flows, it said, would improve their ability to meet those obligations.
The chair of the forum and governor of Kwara State, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, described the Federation Account as “the backbone of the intergovernmental fiscal system”, underscoring its centrality to the country’s revenue-sharing framework.
While the endorsement signals rare unanimity among the states, the broader implications of the executive order — including its impact on industry operations and federal-state fiscal dynamics — are likely to remain at the centre of political and economic debate in the weeks ahead.
