To support the government in its objective to encourage a common set of fiscal behavior aimed at fiscal transparency, accountability, and sustainability among the States of the Federation, the World Bank developed a four-year (2018 – 2022) Programme for Results (PforR) facility worth USD750 million called States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) Performance for Results (PforR).

The programme combines selected actions from the Fiscal Sustainability Plan (FSP) and the Open Government Partnership (OGP) agenda to form its disbursement linked results which States are to meet before they can access funds. The Federal Ministry of Finance Budget and National Planning (FMFBNP) decided to ‘on grant’ the PforR financing to States. This significantly increased the incentives that the program provides to the States (noting that the financial assistance packages from FGN prior to this were loans to the States).

The USD750 million financing of the programme was spread to cover USD700 million in annual

performance grants and USD50 million in technical assistance support to States. For the annual performance grants component, States are assessed on the level of their achievement of the Eligibility Criteria and set of Disbursement Linked Results (DLRs) by the Independent Verification Agent (IVA) – the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation (OAuGF) – for each of the four years.

The amount accessible by States each year under the PforR is dependent on the States’ ability to meet the annual eligibility criteria and nine (9) Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLIs) across four Key Result Areas (KRA) namely: Increase fiscal transparency and accountability; Strengthen domestic revenue mobilization; Increase efficiency in public expenditure; and Strengthen debt management.

On the 14 th of December 2020, the World Bank Board approved an additional financing of USD750 million to the SFTAS PforR to assist States to cope with the fiscal constraints to adequately contain the COVID-19 Pandemic. This was premised on the addition of 10 new DLIs with some being incorporated as sub-DLIs bringing the total number of DLIs to thirteen.

The Technical Assistance (TA) Component for SFTAS (also referred to as the “TA component”) uses the Investment Project Financing (IPF) instrument and is managed in accordance with the Bank’s policy and directive for Investment Project Financing (IPF). The TA component is being delivered by implementing agencies – Public Service Institute of Nigeria (PSIN), Debt Management Office (DMO), Open Government Partnership (OGP) and an Implementing Partner which is the Nigeria Governors’ Forum.