Deputy Country Director of BudgiT, Vahyala Kwaga, has said weak disclosure practices, poor financial reporting systems and lack of political will are preventing Nigerians from tracking how public funds are spent, despite government claims of improved revenue performance.

Speaking in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Thursday, Kwaga said analysts are unable to properly monitor public finances because statutory reporting obligations are routinely ignored.

“Unfortunately, we’re not able to track as well as we should, and that’s primarily because of the disclosure regime,” he said. “You have legislation that speaks to when reports should be made, when documentation should be published, and these things are more or less ignored at will.”

He pointed to weaknesses in the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS), which was designed to unify revenue, expenditure and reporting under one ecosystem.

“GIFMIS was meant to bring together revenue, expenditure, reporting and publishing in a comprehensive framework,” he said. “But I’m not particularly sure how well it has transitioned to capital expenditure monitoring. It monitors overhead and personnel because those payments are made monthly, but capital expenditure — it’s not clear whether that has fallen under GIFMIS comprehensively.”

Kwaga added that implementation of the system has been gradual and incomplete, raising further transparency concerns.

“It’s not even clear how many MDAs are fully under GIFMIS. State-owned enterprises are not even under it. So there is a massive case of under-reporting,” he said.

According to him, Nigeria’s actual revenues may be significantly higher than officially reported because income from state-owned enterprises, asset sales and dividends are not fully captured in publicly available data.

“The revenue that we think we have, we likely have maybe two or three times that amount, because revenue from state-owned enterprises, their surplus, dividends and asset sales isn’t being reported as part of what the revenue authorities are declaring,” he said.

He also lamented the suspension and inconsistency of the Open Treasury portal, introduced under former President Muhammadu Buhari to provide daily payment data.

“Open Treasury used to provide daily payment data for some overheads and some capital expenditure. In January 2025, we stopped getting updates. I think they later resumed backdating the data, but for a period, there was simply no information,” he said.

“There is a lot of information that is simply not put out for the public to scrutinise, or even for analysts like ourselves to go over.”

On who should bear responsibility for capital budget underperformance, Kwaga stressed that public financial management involves multiple layers of approval, making it impossible for senior officials to claim ignorance.

“As an MDA, if I want to spend capital expenditure, I pass my warrant or authority to incur expenditure. The Minister of Finance signs, it goes to the Accountant-General, then to the Central Bank to confirm cash backing,” he explained. “There are lots of people involved in these processes.”

He emphasised that the Minister of Finance, as head of the Cash Management Committee, must be aware of disbursement realities.

“You can’t tell me the Minister of Finance doesn’t know whether money is being disbursed or not,” he said.

Kwaga argued that technology alone cannot solve the problem without political commitment.

“This brings me back to how technology can be put in place, but where the human or political will doesn’t exist, you don’t see anything happening,” he said. “The very things Nigerians should enjoy as dividends of democracy are simply not available.”

On the broader economic impact, he warned that suppressed capital spending could distort perceptions of growth.

“Gross domestic product calculations are done retrospectively. When we talk about Q1, we only fully understand it much later,” he said. “It gives the impression that there’s something going on in government that politicians, civil servants and political appointees are not telling Nigerians.”

Responding to concerns about ambitious projections in the proposed 2026 budget — including oil production and price benchmarks — Kwaga agreed that Nigeria has a history of overestimating revenue.

“When you look at past performance, there’s a clear sign that we always overshoot things and tend to underspend,” he said. “Now it’s becoming more glaring.”

He expressed hope that the National Assembly would exercise stronger oversight but admitted scepticism about meaningful accountability.

“I hope the National Assembly can rise to the occasion,” he said. “Although I share the scepticism that nothing really will be done, because most of these gentlemen already have a clear picture of what should be.”

Kwaga concluded that without improved transparency, comprehensive reporting and stronger political will, Nigeria’s budget process will continue to struggle to translate rising allocations into tangible results for citizens. (Arise News)

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