On December 14th, 2016 the President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari presented the 2017 Budget Proposals to the joint session of the National Assembly. He presented a budget size of N7.298 trillion, 30.7 % of which is for capital expenditure while the rest 69.3 % is for re-current expenditures. The breakdown of the budget is a 1470-page document that only a few people can have the patience to go through it for the details of appropriation for different or specific agencies.
As a clear departure from what has always been, there is a budget revolution gradually building up. Efforts are being made by some individuals to make budget transparency a reality. Few weeks ago, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) under the leadership of Hadiza Bala Usman signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with BudgIT Nigeria (@BudgITng), Nigeria’s civic tech organisation raising the standards of transparency, citizen engagement & accountability most especially in public finance, to provide Nigerians with all the necessary information during implementation of the NPA’s budget. Few days after the presentation of the 2017 budget proposals by the President, two gentlemen are setting the pace for budget transparency. They have shared the budget estimates of their agencies publicly and has even gone ahead to express their readiness to entertain questions bordering on same.
Dr Joe Abah is the Director-General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms, in the Presidency. On December 20th, he took to twitter to share his agency (@bpsr_ng)’s budget.
Following in his footsteps, the Statistician-General of the Federation and CEO of Nationl Bureau of Statistics, Dr Yemi Kale shared NBS 2017 Budget Proposal.
We wait to see how many more people will want to toe this path of openness and let Nigerians in on their budget such that it becomes a practice.
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