President Muhammadu Buhari’s policy on mandatory publication electronically of financial transactions of the Federal Government monthly and quarterly is in the direction of his manifesto to fight corruption.
The government has launched a portal to enable the Accountant-General of the Federation publish daily financial transactions of the Federal Government.
The President provided details of the initiative: “The government has committed to full implementation of the Freedom of Information Act 2014 so that government-held data-sets can be availed and used by the media and the public at large.
All MDAs are required to promptly respond to additional requests for information beyond what is published.”
With these words, the policy to establish Open Treasury Portal in Abuja looks more certain than its prototype in 2018 that never became available to the public.
It is expected that this time, implementation will take place with the potential to strengthen other preventive measures against corruption, such as Single Treasury Account (TSA).
A special portal to publish details of flow of funds in and out of the Federal Government’s account is a welcome development from an administration that came into power on the promise of change from the old ways of doing government business.
And this move is in sync with President Buhari’s implementation of the TSA.
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The new policy has the potential to furnish civil society and citizens with additional opportunities to scrutinise performance data of the government.
We therefore encourage the media and citizens to take advantage of this initiative in their bid to monitor transparency in Federal Government’s financial transactions.
Further, we urge state governments, some of which are already creating legislations to fight corruption, to emulate the Federal Government’s commitment to regular publication online of revenue and expenditure at the level of state and local governments.
Citizens at these levels deserve to know what happens to funds designed to improve quality of life at the subnational levels.
To avoid illustration of the cliché about ‘garbage in, garbage out’ on the part of agencies feeding the portal, Bill Gate’s advice in broader contexts about automation:” automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency … automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency,” is apt.
Government needs to provide all resources needed for efficient and accurate materials to get to the portal and eliminate those likely to prevent regular appearance of important information that the government plans to make available to the public.
When obstacles to ensure faithful transfer of information from analogue copies in the account offices of the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to digital copies online are kept to the minimum, there are chances of meaningful interaction and monitoring that can in turn strengthen the achievement of the goal of this policy – fostering openness and transparency.
For example, there was a time when budgets of the Federal Government were published online for citizens; this practice suddenly disappeared without any explanations.
While expecting the commitment of President Buhari to “kill corruption before corruption kills Nigeria” to avoid the failure of the 2018 mooting of similar goals, we recommend that civil society take immediate interest in preparing programmes to monitor the policy as it evolves.
We also commend President Buhari for giving additional emphasis to fighting corruption through this initiative.
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