Nigeria’s Budget Is Treated Like A Government Secret: How An Online Public Monitoring System Could Fight Corruption
BY TOLU OLAREWAJU ECONOMIST AND POSTGRADUATE SUPERVISOR, UNIVERSITY OF LANCASHIRE, KEELE UNIVERSITY Nigerians have no reliable way of scrutinising the national budget. The citizen’s portal of the Nigerian Budget Office of the Federation is often offline, and when it is online, it is highly technical and difficult for ordinary citizens to understand. Data on the Nigerian budget sourced elsewhere online is also frequently hard to find and incomplete. As a result, the Nigerian budget is treated like a government secret and Nigerian citizens are unable to effectively scrutinise the government’s income and expenditure decisions. My research shows that this disrupts the social contract between the citizens and the government of Nigeria and creates an opportunity for corruption. The World Justice Project estimates that corruption has cost the Nigerian economy more than US$550 billion since 1960. And a report by the accounting firm PwC shows that corruption in Nigeria could cost up t...
