No doubt, a number of ills characterised Buhari’s administration in 2019. From over 75 attacks on the press, to a number of violations of court orders and the pumped prices that came with the closure of the Nigerian border. Chibok girls are still missing and the negotiation for release remain a political subject. Moreover, thousands of displaced persons and deaths still caused by Boko Haram attacks. The same government has virtually run deficit budget and incurred not less than $80 billion in debt since 2015.
Nevertheless, a number of transparency and anti-corruption initiatives helped the administration score good points. A major transparency platform, call it Buhari’s December image redemption (the redemption should have been Sowore’s release but the damage done by the SSS is forever, irreparable), was the launch of the open treasury portal. Speaking with Mr. Oludotun Babayemi, co-founder of Connected Development and Follow The Money Int’l, he commented that the most consequential wins in terms of Buhari’s transparency move in 2019 have been the open government efforts to make government operations known to citizens.
However, DATAPHYTE analysis revealed an unfortunate situation with the daily payments transfer dockets published on the Open Treasury portal. Over nine thousand of the daily transactions between January and November 2019 perused by DATAPHYTE analysts have either ambiguous or no description to determine the purpose of the expenditure.
Literally, over 510.23 billion naira worth of transaction cannot be traced back to the 2018 and 2019 budget appropriation documents. It means over 16 percent of the total payments done by the government in 2019 (but December) would require further Freedom of Information request by Media or civil society organizations. The chart below gives a glimpse of line-item costs that were undescribed on a monthly basis.
Actually, the entire money spent or disbursed between January and November 2019 was over 3.15 trillion naira (3,151,968,581,253). These funds exchanged hands between the government agencies, its personnel, and contractors. The transfer dockets of the Federal Government was opened at least 48,386 times to secure the transactions.
As shown in the chart below, January and February payments were N264.1 billion and N299.5 billion respectively. A total sum of N236.2 billion was spent in March while April, May, and June payments were N445.5 billion, N298.9 billion and N392.8 billion. For July, August and September, N314.7 billion, N199.8 billion and N124.2 billion were spent in that order while N283.8 billion was spent in October and N292.5 billion in November.
The anomaly with the zero or ambiguous description of government expenditures discredits the fiscal transparency goal of the administration. Moreover, it beckons on the Federal Government to make quick adjustments to the bookkeeping process across agencies. Especially, to show how honest the portal’s pledge to ensure full implementation of the Freedom of Information Act.
When contacted, Mr. Samuel Atiku, a policy analyst, and the former Research Lead at BudgIT commended the government for coming through with the open treasury initiative. Notwithstanding, the Ministry still needs to provide project-level analysis of expenditures and disbursement, he further stated. This will help citizens and advocates have a clear cut idea of how expenditures by government agencies link directly to budget appropriation.
Ms. Nkem Ilo, the CEO of the Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC) also lamented that budget activities of government are not linked across the value chain of fiscal transparency. This is worrisome and might weaken the media and civil society lens of accountability, she said.
She submitted that full-scale transparency of government requires that data across the budget, procurement and disbursement processes are presented in a manner that makes various stages to be linked to each other.
The Open Treasury Portal
The open treasury portal keeps various reports relating to budget disbursement and general performance. Based on the information provided on the portal, the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF) will publish payments of at least 10 Million Naira outlining the MDA responsible, the beneficiary, purpose and amount of each payment. MDAs will publish payments above 5 million Naira.
Key features displayed on the portal are Daily Payment Reports, Monthly Budget Performance Report, Monthly Fiscal Accounts, Quarterly Budget Performance Report, Quarterly Financial Statements (MDAs), Quarterly Consolidated Financial Statements, and the Annual General Purpose Financial Statements.
A quick search of these features failed to show any datasets for the sections relating to Quarterly Budget Performance Report, Quarterly Financial Statements (MDAs), Quarterly Consolidated Financial Statements, and the Annual General Purpose Financial Statements.
However, the following sections – Daily Payment Reports, Monthly Budget Performance Report, and Monthly Fiscal Accounts – had a number of datasets for January to November 2019. Some amount of data were also found on the 2018 tab for the sections.
While each feature already made provisions for the coming years up to 2026, there is no historic data down to 2015 when the administration began or even beyond.