The federal government is set to forfeit $10 million from a World Bank credit facility due to shortcomings in audit quality, delays in launching a national budget portal, and the slow rollout of a revenue assurance system.
The fund is part of the $103 million Fiscal Governance and Institutions Project (FGIP), which is financed by the International Development Association (IDA), a World Bank lending arm. The project, aimed at strengthening public financial management, is scheduled to close on June 30, 2025.
According to a June 2025 restructuring paper addressed to the federal ministry of finance (FMF), “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.”
One of the cancelled components includes a $4 million audit of key revenue agencies — the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) — which the World Bank deemed substandard. “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 document stated.
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On the $4.5 million Revenue Assurance and Billing System (RABS), the bank said: “This was because there was evidence for only 27 out of the 55 FGOEs setting up a Treasury Single Account (TSA) sub-account for foreign earned revenues, and there was no automatic split and transfer of foreign earned revenues to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) as required.”
Final disbursement is estimated at $96.04 million, 93 per cent of the original amount
