Ensuring Good Governance through Financial Transparency

The federal government’s fight against corruption is believed to have received a boost with the recent launch of the open treasury portal which will among other things, encourage government’s whistle-blowing policy, check sharp practices and financial misappropriation in public institutions.

It is a component of good governance; that element that makes the people to be aware of the resources that are in the hands of government.

The treasury portal is domiciled in the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation in the Ministry of Finance for access intandem with the federalgovernment’s agenda of promoting open governance.

Some years back, Nigeria joinedthe Open Governance Partnership which is a global alliance of about 17 countries that are committed to fiscal transparency and public accountability.

It is believed that this portal which seems to be a follow-up of the partnership, will herald the era of transparency that will improve public service delivery in Nigeria.

There is a general perception that the programme is an extension of open governance whereby the management of the country’sresources is being monitored real time by Nigerians.

It is hoped that this process will further deepen the anti-corruption fight of the federal government, as people can now assess the conduct of publicofficials that are given the trust to manageresources.

Against the backdrop of the recent controversy over constituency projects,this portal is also an avenue for constituents to monitor whether projects have been delivered or not.Nigerians now have the right to know about the financials of government at all levels including accruals and expenditures.

Furthermore, through the portal, citizens will get to understand their roles and responsibilities in advancing public debate and increasing demand to agitate rightly and constructively for reform initiatives and policies.They will know how revenues are saved and used to narrow down the country’s widening budget deficit.

In reinforcing this transparency scheme, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) recently inaugurated what it called the Beneficial Ownership Register, which among other things, provides information about oil block licenses in the extractive industry.

At the moment, Nigeria does not have the expertise, financial muscle and capacity required to manage its oil assets. This system is capable of boosting the confidence of the Independent Oil Companies (IOCs) and other investors to increase their efficiency.

But thebigger picture for NEITI is to seek amendment of the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) to enable itprovide a more comprehensive register that will give information on as many companies as possible.

It is the ultimate utility of this open treasury policy as an advocacy tool that will truly make it the hallmark of good governance. But there are inherent problems in challenging opaqueness through this document.

Firstly, distorted information can be dangerous. Given that the threshold of amounts to be disclosed on the portal are N5m for ministries and N10m for the office of the Accountant-General, it brings to the fore the role ofauditing before uploading information.

There could be attempts by institutions to circumvent the process by breaking down bulk amounts or splitting up contracts so that they donot make a particular threshold.

Secondly, when Nigeria was exiting from the Paris Club, there were deliberations on the effective implementation of policy instruments includingthe Fiscal Responsibility Act, Public Procurement Act and FOI Act.

These Acts including Section 51 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, empower the people to access details of government expenditure. Yet it is doubtful whether these tools have effectively ensuredownership of participatory contentin budgeting and other public expenditures.

Thirdly, President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration started the era of publishing receipts of the three tiers of government through the Federal Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) on a monthly basis till date.

But the initiative has lost steam and become routine because it has not helped much in transparency and accountability advocacy.It will be good to see how this treasury portal will be different in making the people the ultimate beneficiaries.

What is needed now is sincerity of government inguaranteeing that this regime of accountability and transparency is given a human face. This means opening up the spaceto ensure that citizens are empowered to appraise periodic reviews of public expenditures.

The commitment to improve governance and equip Nigerians with the tool to study and identify financial wrongdoings will involvethe input of professionals.

They have the knowledge and capability to discover loopholes, and can therefore, engage in massive civic education or training of citizens.

The federal and state governments, and the World Bank signed up to a scheme called the States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability Initiative which incentivizes states to before accountable to their citizens.But cascading this policy to the sub-national entities with huge populations poses a constitutional challenge.

What the executive arm of government can do in these linkages is to initiate an executive bill before the National Assembly that will translate this programme into a law.

If the government fails to initiate such a bill, some members of the National Assembly can introduce private member’s bill and ensure its successful passage into law.

What this does is to insulate the scheme from policy somersaults of successive administrations. In other words, once it is translated into law, it will be difficult for any government to consign it to the dustbin of history through an executive fiat.

The constitution is meant for the people, and it is an organic document that is supposed to change with the changing realities to take into consideration the objective and subjective experiences of the time.

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The onus is now on the National Assembly to kick-start the process of constitutional amendment to capture the sub-national levels of government given the huge resources at the disposal of these entities.

As a matter of fact, in terms of quantum, the volume of resources in the hands of local and state governments is more than what is available at the federal level. So, it is important that the battle of transparency is taken down to these categories of government.