Lagos top the list of 11 States that have failed to publish details of their 2019 budget online despite incentive created by the World Bank to encourage public finance transparency in the top Africa’s economy.
“This contravenes the ideals of openness and transparency in the management of public resources, which is the requisite guideline for the World Bank’s State Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) programme,” BudgIT said in a statement on Monday.
The World Bank in conjunction with the federal government has set up $750 million to strengthen fiscal transparency, accountability and sustainability in Nigerian states as a means to boost their revenue base, increase fiscal efficiency in public expenditure while reducing debt overhangs.
BudgIT, a civic society organisation that applies technology to intersect citizen engagement with institutional improvement in public sector finance said its 8-month painstaking effort, the assessment of the availability of public finance documents in state government domains reveals that only twenty-five states’ approved budgets are available online, a few of which are summarized scanned documents.
“We must emphasise that Imo, Zamfara and Sokoto states have not published their budget documents since 2017, whereas Lagos State, which provides only a thumbnail of it, has a history of notoriously resisting attempts to uncover its financial dealings, thus embedding corruption’” BudgIT said.
“It is commendable that many other states have released full budget documents to the public. However, those documents must always be published within a reasonable timeframe in an accessible format. This is pivotal in enabling citizens to engage legislators during budget debates. States with partially detailed budget documents – in public domains – must provide details of capital projects being executed for the fiscal year,” said Gabriel Okeowo, BudgIT’s Principal Lead.
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