Budget transparency: Nigeria ranks 90th in world, 23rd in Africa

FG’s failure to produce mid-year review responsible — BudgIT

By Yinka Kolawole

Nigeria has been ranked 90th in the world and 23rd in Africa on budget transparency out of 115 countries globally and 38 African countries in the 2017 Open Budget Index (OBI) survey which was released yesterday.

Nigeria’s score on the index dipped from 24 percent in 2015 to 17 percent, and currently ranks behind Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Liberia in Africa while South Africa has been ranked first alongside New Zealand globally.

The  Open Budget Index  (OBI) is a global independent, comparative measure of central government  budget  transparency. Countries covered by the  survey are given a transparency score between 0 and 100, used to construct the  Index which ranks the assessed countries.

OBI assesses the comprehensiveness and timeliness of budget information that governments make publicly available. The OBI survey also examines the extent of effective oversight provided by legislatures, the independent fiscal institutions and the supreme audit institutions, and the opportunities available to the public to participate in national budget processes.

Meanwhile, analysts at BudgIT have blamed Nigeria’s low rank on the failure of the federal government to produce mid-year review.
“Also, the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and the Budget Implementation Reports were published late while the content of all budget documents produced in Nigeria falls short on the minimum acceptable global standards as itemised in the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency Framework,” they stated.
“Nigeria needs to produce and publish a mid-year review of fiscal activities in line with the minimum global standard in budgeting. There is also an urgent need for a structured participatory mechanism designed to capture views of the public throughout the budget cycle,” the analysts recommended.

BudgIT expresses dismay at Nigeria’s current position on fiscal transparency and public participation in the budget process as Africa’s largest economy has apparently taken steps backwards despite persistent advocacy by citizens and repeated promises by the government to improve, Abiola Afolabi, Communications Lead at BudgIT, noted.

“The Federal Government of Nigeria provides her citizens with insufficient budget information making it difficult for taxpayers to understand how elected officials are utilising available resources. Also, the budget process takes very little feedback from the public, and the final budget document does not reveal how the meagre feedbacks are used.”

BudgIT urged the Federal Government to improve the timeliness of the release of its essential budget documents and run an open budget system. “It is also vital that Nigeria improves on the comprehensiveness of the critical budget documents, including the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), the Budget Implementation Reports, the executive budget proposal, the enacted budget and the year-end report,” it stated.

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