By Abidemi Adebamiwa
Most Nigerians think the president personally gives states their monthly Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) allocations. The misunderstanding survives because politicians use credit-seeking language around routine fiscal transfers. The money belongs to states and local governments by constitutional entitlement and the revenue-sharing formula is applied by committee computation. A president only signs the administrative transfer after the formula calculates each state’s share.
On many public platforms, supporters aligned with the ruling party amplify this halo framing. Members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have repeated lines like Tinubu has given the most money to governors. The statements circulate loudly on Facebook, WhatsApp and X. The illusion grows not because a president said he is gifting money but because supporters use the word “gave” to harvest credit.
In the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) dominated spaces, the reaction to correcting credit is just as emotional. Members of the PDP will hear entitlement explanations and say you must be supporting the opposition president or defending APC governors. The irritation is about disrupted credit, not disrupted constitutional rights. Citizens swap fiscal labels for party labels where vocabulary crowns individuals not systems.
Political tagging cannot change legal entitlement but it can scramble who receives the applause.
According to Obinna Chima, Editor of THISDAY Saturday, a leading political remark in Abia linked subsidy removal talk to credit for governors’ projects. The comment pushed the idea that praising the president would unlock more releases to governors. Although this remark wasn’t a definition of how FAAC works, it shaped public assumptions. The narrative spread faster than any technical explanation.
FAAC transfers flow from a jointly owned national revenue pool. The FAAC computes state shares before any president approves the routing. Approval is a signature on an administrative instruction not a gift drawn from personal discretion. A nation that sees the process will ask what happened to their state’s money, not who theatrically approved it.
Nigeria’s public finance is rule-bound, not relation-bound. Presidents or governors don’t create entitlement formulas personally. They cannot rewrite the tiers’ revenue shares without legislative amendment. Vocabulary truth is not party truth.
Nigeria deserves headlines that praise outcomes more than approvals. It deserves citizens who read the process more than slogans. It deserves scrutiny that lands on results not signatures. The truth should ring louder than allegiance assumptions. If vocabulary clarity becomes popular, accountability will grow.
Abidemi is a political scientist and the Managing Editor @ Newspot Nigeria.
