BudgIT, a prominent civic-tech organisation promoting transparency and accountability in Nigeria’s public finance, has raised serious concerns over the refusal of the Federal Ministry of Finance, via the Budget Office, to publish Quarterly Budget Implementation Reports (BIR), describing its action as a violation of statute, established practice and a clear erosion of the hard-won dissemination and transparency reforms of previous administrations.
It is settled law, per the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007 in Part V, Budgetary Execution and Achievement of Targets, section 30 that: “The Minister of Finance shall cause the report (on the Implementation of the Annual Budget) prepared pursuant to subsection (1) of this section to be published in the mass and electronic media and on the Ministry of Finance website, not later than 30 days after the end of each quarter.” Furthermore, the previous administration, in its two terms, published a minimum of 3 BIRs per fiscal year. With nearly 4 BIRs pending from Q2, 2024, to Q2, 2025, the current administration has not published a single BIR in nearly one fiscal year.
Budget Implementation Reports are not only a requirement of the law and established practice, they are an indication of a government’s willingness to be transparent and to provide evidence of its spending.
The proof of this spending is crucial to assess the quality of implementation of its budget and, more broadly, the quality of the delivery of public goods and services. Public sector accounting principles emphasise the need to publish and disseminate financial information as a matter of professional practice and to secure the engagement of the public, a significant stakeholder in public financial management.
It is troubling that the current administration has ignored the law and refused to publish a key public document. It would have been preferred that the current administration build on the foundation of previous governments and, in addition to regular implementation reports, publish and disseminate the Federal Cash Plan Disbursement Schedule, per section 26 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act. This poor state of affairs is all the more compelling, considering the current administration has just concluded spending on the 2024 Appropriation (though it is unclear if the 2024 Supplementary.
Appropriation is still being implemented). Regrettably, the Ministry of Finance and Budget Office of the Federation have withheld crucial information that the private sector is meant to use for planning, information that Civil Society and the Academia are meant to use for their advocacy and analysis and information that will show the international community that Nigeria operates according to accepted norms and conventions of international public finance.
Perhaps more worrying is the fact that this disposition towards providing public information does not end with Quarterly BIRs but extends to the government’s own public platforms, namely OpenTreasury.gov, which used to be the go-to source of information on daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly spending of the federal government. While the platform was not perfect (several government Ministries, Departments and Agencies’ spending data was absent, links were broken, and the data was often not machine-readable), it was largely comprehensive and a demonstration of transparency and the willingness of the government to be held accountable. The government has not updated the platform with new information since January 2025.
Commenting, BudgIT’s Group Head of Research and Policy Advisory, Vahyala Kwaga, contends that the unwillingness of this administration to publish what was once a matter of routine is discouraging.
“The ability of a government to hold itself accountable to its laws is not only to be expected of a democracy such as ours but is an indication of adherence to the rule of law. The non-publishing of crucial information by the Ministry of Finance and the Budget Office of the Federation should not be augmented by ‘pronouncements’ by the Minister/Director General in the media. It should be done by publishing financial information according to existing laws. Citizens and the general public have a right to know and a right to be informed,” he said.
To this end, BudgIT calls on the Ministry of Finance and the Budget Office of the Federation, and the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to uphold the principles of transparency, legal compliance, and accountability in the management of public funds. We also urge citizens, civil society organisations, the private sector, academia/research, and the international community to collectively seek the urgent publication of the expenditure performance underpinning the federal government’s 2024 budget. We all have a right to know.
