Budget Transparency Survey 2020 Reports & More
The Nigerian States Budget Transparency Survey questionnaire is based on the International Budget Partnership’s (IBP) Open Budget Survey (OBS) questionnaire, which measures budget transparency, oversight of the budget by the legislature and Supreme Audit Institution (SAI), and participation mechanisms throughout the budget process at the national level in almost 120 countries. This is the third edition. Each round, the multiple-choice questionnaire was completed by CIRDDOC’s CSO partners with backgrounds in fiscal governance in all 36 Nigerian states. The data collection process was conducted from August 2020 to February 2021. The responses to these multiple-choice questions were then
aggregated to create the State Budget Transparency Index, which can be disaggregated into three sub-indices:
- State Budget Document Availability Index, which measures the number of publicly available budget documents and their contents;
- State Public Participation Index, which measures the extent to which the state executive, SHoAs, and Auditor-General (AG) involve citizens throughout the budget process; and
- State Procurement Process Index, which measures how robust state procurement processes are and how much information is provided throughout the process.
Download State Budget Transparency Survey 2020 Report
VIEW RESULTS BY STATES
Budget Transparency Index 2020 Rankings
Nigerian states have significantly improved budget transparency and participation and improved the robustness of the procurement process. Nigerian states have built on previous efforts and have improved their scores, on average, by 12 points when compared to the 2018 Survey. The average score now is 42 out of 100. Figure 1 presents the State Budget Transparency Index 2020 which finds that Nigerian states on average provide some information on the budget and procurement processes with limited spaces for public participation. Twelve states have significantly increased their score by 20 points or higher while 18 states have improved their score by at least one point. These improvements are mainly due to the timely online publication of budget documents and enactment of procurement laws meant to better guide the procurement process. Only a few states regressed with Delta and Lagos state scores decreased by 21 and 22 points respectively. These states didn’t publish budget documents online and closed spaces for public participation.
Download 2020 Budget Transparency Index Score
Availability Of Key Budget Documents
Nigerian states have significantly increased the amount of budget information and have done so consistently since the first edition in 2015. The average score is now 49 (an increase of 17 points) compared to 32 in 2018. The average score in 2015 was 26. On average, states almost shifted to higher categories of disclosure of budget information. Citizens in most Nigerian states now have access to about of the budget information required by the Nigerian State Budget Transparency Survey. Figure 2 presents the State Budget Document Availability Index scores in 2020 for all 36 states. Sixteen states (almost half) score above the average score. While Jigawa state continues to be at the top of the Index when compared to the previous edition, Ondo and Kano now rank second and third on this Index with scores of 86 and 80 respectively. Akwa Ibom, Ekiti, Ebonyi, Kaduna, Kogi, and Ogun states all score 61 or above and provide significant amount of budget information. The worst performers are Zamfara and Oyo state with scores of 21 and 5 respectively. Oyo state in particular had no document available online since none of the links worked even after careful search of their website.
Download 2020 Availability Of Key Budget Documents
2020 State Draft Estimates
While the questionnaire does include questions on the comprehensives of the State Draft Estimates and State Approved Estimates, previous editions didn’t analyse these questions due to a lack of a critical mass of states publishing these documents. Of the 13 states[1] that publish their State Draft Estimates, at least half of the budget information that ought to be included is actually included in the Draft Estimates. Six states publish the document in December, five states publish the document in November, and only Ekiti state published the document in September (international best practice). Figure 4 presents the comprehensiveness of the State Draft Estimates published online.