33 States Lack Portals for Budget Monitoring, Says BudgIT
Written by COMFORT 95.1FM on February 22, 2021
A technology-driven civic organization, BudgIT, says about thirty-three states in Nigeria lack portals that enable members of the public to monitor and scrutinize their annual budget performance.
This was the position of the organization during a virtual workshop on ‘Advocacy and Budget and Project Monitoring’ recently.
In his paper presentation on ‘Advocacy for Fund Disbursement and Improved Service Delivery,’ Mr. Tolulope Agunloye said only Kaduna and Edo States have portals where their budget performance could be monitored by members of the public, while Lagos State operates partial opening of its budget to the public.
Agunloye, who explained that accessibility to such fiscal documents would promote transparency in governance, noted that before an organization or an individual could advocate transparency in budgets, there must be objectives, which include planning and clear specific that must be achievable.
On his part, the Programme Officer, BudgIT Foundation, . Henry Omokhaye was of the opinion that budget implementation starts from the electioneering process, emphasizing that the quality of a leader determined the direction of budget performance.