By Toyin Victor, ABUJA
Fifteen years after its establishment, civic technology organisation BudgIT says Nigeria still has a long way to go in achieving genuine fiscal transparency and accountability.
The Country Director of BudgIT Nigeria, Vahyala Kwaga, identified poor government disclosure, weak accountability mechanisms and declining citizen participation as major obstacles to effective democratic governance.
Kwaga spoke in Abuja at a press briefing to mark BudgIT’s 15th anniversary, where he said governments at all levels must make public financial information routinely accessible rather than waiting for citizens and civil society organisations to demand it.
He said citizens are still forced to rely on advocacy campaigns and formal requests to access information that should ordinarily be available in the public domain.
According to him, transparency alone is not enough, stressing that government data must be timely, accessible and capable of helping citizens question spending and demand accountability.
Kwaga said economic hardship had also weakened citizen participation, as many Nigerians struggle to remain actively engaged in governance while dealing with their livelihoods.
He said BudgIT had reached more than 22 million Nigerians through fiscal education and civic engagement, while its community monitoring activities had tracked 19,644 projects valued at about N8.5 trillion across 7,589 communities.
The BudgIT Country Director also criticised budget alterations by the National Assembly, arguing that lawmakers proposing and approving projects could create conflicts of interest and make public expenditure more difficult to monitor.
Assessing the Tinubu administration, Kwaga acknowledged some positive developments in the anti-corruption drive but called for stronger respect for the rule of law, court orders, media freedom and greater openness in governance.
As BudgIT marks 15 years of promoting public finance transparency, Kwaga said the organisation would deepen citizen participation, expand its civic technology initiatives and explore operations in two additional East African countries, insisting that informed and active citizens remain critical to holding government accountable.