Kano’s LG revenue gap widens as state collections soar to N102bn

Lukman Abdulmalik

Kano State has failed to report any revenue generated by its 44 local government areas in at least three of the last four National Bureau of Statistics reporting cycles, even as the state government’s own revenue collection nearly tripled between 2023 and 2025, a comparative review of NBS and state government records shows.

NBS data show Kano was among 16 states that recorded zero local government revenue in 2023, a list that also included Rivers, Delta, Enugu, Anambra, Katsina, Plateau, Nasarawa, Zamfara, Niger, Bayelsa, Benue, Sokoto, Adamawa, Kebbi and Yobe.

That year, only 20 states reported a combined N37.05bn in local government revenue nationally, down from N48.7bn reported by 29 states in 2022, a year in which the top three LGA earners, Oyo, Lagos and Jigawa, again did not include Kano. Kano was absent once more in 2025, when 21 states reported a combined N65.82bn.

The pattern is not unique to Kano. Katsina recorded zero local government revenue in both 2022 and 2023, according to the NBS. Kaduna, by contrast, reported a modest N382.22m in 2023, ranking 12th among the 20 states that submitted figures, well behind Lagos’s N10.49bn and Ebonyi’s N6.13bn.

Where Kano diverges sharply from its Northern peers is at the state level. Kano’s Internally Generated Revenue rose from N37.39bn in 2023 to N74.77bn in 2024, a 100 per cent jump, and further to about N102bn in 2025, according to figures cited by the Kano Internal Revenue Service.

That growth pushed Kano to ninth position nationally and first in Northern Nigeria in the NBS’s IGR ranking, a reversal from a position as low as 30th in previous years, KIRS chairman Zaid Abubakar said. The agency is targeting N200bn in 2026.

By comparison, Kaduna, previously the leading Northern state in IGR, collected N58bn in 2022, N62.48bn in 2023 and N71bn in 2024, according to the Kaduna State Internal Revenue Service.

Kano’s 2025 figure of roughly N102bn puts it well ahead of Kaduna’s most recently disclosed full-year total, even though Kaduna has reported local government revenue in NBS data and Kano has not.

The state-versus-local government divergence becomes clearer when set against Kano’s own audited local government accounts.

Records from the Office of the Auditor-General for Local Governments’ 2024 annual accounts show that for 11 of Kano’s 44 councils, Ajingi, Albasu, Bagwai, Bebeji, Bichi, Bunkure, Dala, Dambatta, Dawakin Kudu, Dawakin Tofa and Doguwa, combined tax revenue, non-tax revenue and investment income rose from about N228.5m in 2023 to roughly N1.02bn in 2024, a more than fourfold increase.

Even so, this own-source revenue accounted for a small fraction of each council’s total receipts, with statutory allocation, VAT and other federally allocated revenue making up well over 95 per cent of income in both years.

Extending the pattern found in these 11 councils across all 44 would put Kano’s total local government own-source revenue for 2024 in the region of N4bn, a figure that, if reported, would rank among the higher totals in the NBS dataset but still trail Jigawa, a smaller neighbouring state whose reported LGA revenue rose from N2.89bn in 2023 to N10.04bn in 2025.

That comparison is instructive. Jigawa has fewer local government areas than Kano yet has both reported and grown its LGA revenue consistently, while Kano, with a larger population, a bigger urban and commercial base in metropolitan areas such as Kano Municipal, Fagge, Nassarawa and Gwale, and more than 40 additional councils, has neither reported nor, on the evidence of its own auditor-general’s figures, matched Jigawa’s local government collection scale.

The gap raises two distinct questions that the Kano State Government and the local government service commission have yet to publicly address: whether the state’s 44 councils are simply not collecting revenue commensurate with their commercial and demographic base, or whether they are collecting more than the roughly N1bn a sample of their own accounts suggests, but not reporting it in a form that reaches the NBS.

Either explanation would mean Kano is forgoing a documented, verifiable revenue stream at the local level even as its state government celebrates record-breaking growth in internally generated revenue.