The World Bank is set to release the second final tranche of the $750 million States Fiscal Transparency Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) Programme grant to state governments. As expected, state governments are pitching how well they have utilised the first tranche of grant they received in order to qualify for the second. Assistant Editor NDUKA CHIEJINA reports on what Jigawa and Edo states have done.
To qualify for the next round of $750 million grant, state governments have increased their compliance to the required Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLIs) of the World Bank; States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) Programme.
All the 36 states of the federation have met the initial Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLIs) after which funds are released upon attainment of sets of results. They are now courting the World Bank and the Federal Ministry of Finance to be prequalified to benefit from the next round of grant disbursements.
SFTAS Programme was established by the Federal Government of Nigeria with a concessional loan from the International Development Association (IDA), a member of the World Bank Group.
The loan is designed to support states by the Federal Government through the provision of performance-based grants and technical assistance to implement the Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLIs) derived from the Fiscal Sustainability Plan and the Open Government Partnership (OGP) commitments aimed at strengthening fiscal transparency, accountability and sustainability across all States of the Federation.
The World Bank-Assisted Programme seeks to strengthen fiscal management at the state level so as to ensure effective mobilisation and utilisation of financial resources to the benefit of their citizens in a transparent and sustainable manner thus reducing fiscal risks and encouraging a common set of fiscal behaviours.
The SFTAS’ Deputy National Programme Coordinator, Mr. Ali Mohammed, representing Mr. Stephen Okon, National Programme Coordinator SFTAS Programme Coordinating Unit Federal Ministry of Finance Budget and National Planning, said they have embarked on a nationwide evaluation of the programme in all the states.
Jigawa State
While in Jigawa State, Ali Muhammed said they came “for an interactive session between various states that are into the SFTAS programme. We are in Jigawa for the exercise to foster understanding of the programme. The essence is to look at the Jigawa state SFTAS programme to see the extent of delivery and if there are challenges, we can address them. Jigawa is doing very well no doubt”.
He noted that one area he and his team “would love to highlight is e-procurement. Recently I received a letter from Jigawa State which shows the process has gone far. Jigawa is among the first three states in fiscal reforms in Nigeria. We can look at Jigawa state as a model especially in the North where we are having one or two challenges”.
The Director-General, Due Process Office and also the head of procurement for the Jigawa State government Ado Hussaini, said the “SFTAS programme has done well for us because it has improved our ease of doing business. We are lucky because even before SFTAS, the Governor was committed to transparency. With SFTAS, it has really encouraged us and motivated the state to do more. We signed the law in good time, in line with what SFTAS recommended. We are in the process of completing our e-procurement assignment. We have signed an agreement with the vendors and we have gone a long way. We are targeting June 2022 for delivery on e-procurement. We are doing that because it is possible to achieve full transparency in the state finances”.
Before SFTAS came, Ado Hussaini said Jigawa State already had a law that was being reviewed to incorporate due process and transparent procurement processes.
“But with SFTAS, we relied on their guidance for our operations. We have an existing website, www.jigawadueprocess.com that we uploaded all our procurement and the officials involved for all to see. In fact, we even partner civil societies to achieve greater transparency. They request for documents and we share freely. We have gone a long way. If you go onto our website, you will find everything pertaining to procurement including the law, the template, guidelines and everything else on procurement,” he said.
With SFTAS’s coming on board, the due process and procurement law became mandatory. “Now we will have to publish everything in the media, we have to involve CSOs. We also have the governing board in place. Even the Federal government is afraid of the governing board but we have a governing board in place in Jigawa,” he said.
Ado Hussaini believes that the inclusion of SMEs in the procurement process has migrated people from poverty to wealth especially after the COVID-19.
According to him, “we have now trained small companies that initially didn’t know anything about contracts. They now get contracts and are paid. This is one of the most impactful initiatives. This is the first time since the creation of the states that small companies are brought from nowhere, trained and given contracts. We have already paid about 75 percent of the liabilities that we inherited”.
Speaking further on the liabilities inherited by the present administration, Ado Hussaini disclosed that “we inherited abandoned projects to the tune of about N96 billion. We have done almost 90 percent. We inherited contracts that have been finished and awaiting payment of about N3.6bn, we have paid about 70 percent when there is a will, there is a way”.
The Jigawa State ministry of Lands, Housing, Urban Development and Regional Planning has also been impacted by the SFTAS Programme. The Commissioner, Mr. Sagir Ahmed said the ministry now sees the SFTAS Programme “as a way to improve our capacity in revenue generation, particularly property taxation”.
Ahmed disclosed that “when the project came, the State Government received it very well and the Governor showed political will to see to the success of the project while he appointed a thirteen-member committee with about seven Commissioners, with the Deputy Governor as Chairman for that Property Registration program”.
“Since then, we have been collaborating with the Coordinating Office in the World Bank. They have guided the Ministry since the inception of the project to get to a level where we are about to now do validation for the data that we have generated. And we keyed into this project with expectation because the World Bank has stated what we need to do in terms of property registration – to open about twenty thousand parcels of buildings across the state,” he said.
Ahmed added that “the engagement with SFTAS, property registration has enabled us to prepare adequately for launching our Jigawa State Geographic Information System and His Excellency has already approved the procurement of all the equipment and facilities we require to launch the GIS and we have already engaged Consultants and they have really been working with this Ministry to see that we effect that GIS in our operation”.
On his part, Jigawa State Accountant General, Aminu Sule, revealed the “establishment of a public financial management advisory that now conducts annual, rapid action plan with the aim of improving fiscal performance, budget execution, accounting and reporting, auditing and debt management”.
In readiness for the SFTAS programme, Aminu Sule, said Jigawa State has invested in the State Integrated Financial Management Information System in order to enhance public financial management; the promotion of capacity building for both medium level and intermediate staff officials to ensure efficient skilled manpower to succeed the senior retiring officers from the public financial management MDAs (with the SFTAS grant, there have been a series of training and workshops to prepare those coming onboard to take up mantle of leadership) and now benefit from the support of donors, “although we don’t engage consultants, we have donor agencies that support the State in these endeavours.”
Jigawa Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Chairman Ibrahim Ahmed said the SFTAS programme has helped the Service “to achieve a lot and improve our services in the entire government services. We have a treasury account where all revenues that are collected go into a consolidated account at Zenith bank. There is a great achievement in the IGR”.
Ahmed said the Jigawa State IRS have made efforts to strengthen the state IGR and ensure that “we block all the leakages, adopt full automation of the diagnostic system in the state, and distribute POS to some revenue generating MDA’s and also by improving the IGR account. For each payment gateway, you can make payment into the treasury consolidated account and we have a dashboard whenever we receive the money, we can look at it and see what is going on or what has been remitted on daily or monthly basis”.
Edo State
The acting chairman of Edo State Internal Revenue Service (EIRS), Sadiat Abu, disclosed that the state now generates N2.5 billion monthly. The feat, she said, will reduce the state’s over-dependence on federal allocation.
Sadiat stated this through the Edo Internal Revenue Service (EIRS) Head, Revenue Account, Valentine Adoko, during a media tour of selected government agencies led by officials of the State Fiscal Transparency Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) programme from Abuja.
“Before now, we were not generating up to a billion naira but after the reforms, we moved to N1.5 billion and currently, we are generating an average of between N2.5 billion and N2.6 billion.
“For Edo, one of the participating states. The SFTAS programme has helped to entrench a number of good financial practices. The state’s Accountant General Mr. Julius Anelu explained that with the help of SFTAS it has been able to achieve some targets including liquidating its pension arrears “we have tried to ensure that modalities are put in place to see how these liabilities are defrayed on time. For example the pension arrears as at 2018 when we started were N2.6 billion and as at the first quarter of 2021, we had paid off that liability”.
Anelu said the state has adopted a citizen led approach to budgeting by involving citizens and Civil Society in the preparation and monitoring of budgets.
The Managing director of Edo State Public Procurement Agency, Mr. Henry Idogun, said the state has been able to make up-to date laws to bring transparency into procurement practices in the state and has gone one step further to adopt e-procurement in four of its biggest MDAs preparatory to state-wide roll out.
“SFTAS programme requires that we sign some framework agreement which we have signed and so we are eligible for the grant and so we should also pilot the four MDAs which we are doing and any procurement in any of those MDAs must be done through the electronic procurement portal,” he said.
The scope of the SFTAS programme also covers registration of land titles. The Programme Manager of the Edo Geographic Information Service, Mr. Eromosele, outlined the benefits of the programme to include enumeration of land plots and registration of property owners. He said this has enabled the state government to achieve a social mapping of its people for targeted intervention.
“We are able to collect socioeconomic data during this process and that data was very vital for the state governor as he was able to know where the poor and vulnerable people are and so he was able to reach out to them, secondly we are able to capture a large database of people who are doing land transactions they will be encouraged because they know that okay they have a lot of property enumerated”.
A Communication Specialist for SFTAS, Mr. Ibrahim Mohammed, expressed delight at the milestones achieved by some of the participating states and called for measures to institutionalise the reforms by enacting enabling laws.