An analyst, Tunde Jacobs, has reacted to a recent BudgIT Foundation, a Lagos-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), report that ranked Sokoto, the 36 states based on their supposed compliance with basic financial reporting standards.
In its 2023 fiscal transparency league table, BudgIT placed Sokoto state in the 13th position.
Jacobs, however, wondered what went wrong in the few months between the last quarter of 2023 and the third quarter of 2024 that prompted the BudgIT team to slam Sokoto state with an abysmal indexing.
He posited that “perhaps because Sokoto state did not roll out the drums to celebrate its positive fiscal transparency ranking in 2023, the BudgIT crew “felt offended” and decided to take the state to the cleaners. This is the only logical explanation for the dramatic reversal of fortunes, which saw Sokoto state falling from the 13th position in 2023 to the very last position (36th) in the 2024 third-quarter BudgIT rankings.
“Though Sokoto state achieved perfect scores in areas such as the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Approved Budget, it faced challenges in key areas like revenue repository, audit transparency, and the e-procurement portal. Additionally, its website with fiscal data repository showed room for improvement.”
“This simply means that the financial reports the BudgIT team saw on the Sokoto state websites had not been updated at the due date. Nobody accused the government of violating the standard financial reporting framework in a manner that could remotely smack of irresponsible accounting or total lack of accountability.
“If the fiscal reports were not up to date, a more dignifying approach would have been to reach out to the state authorities and obtain the information needed to close any gaps in the process.
“But alas, BudgIT Country Director Gabriel Okeowo and his desktop researchers failed to seek engagement with Sokoto or any other state with gaps in their fiscal transparency key indicators.
“They chose to sit behind the keyboards in their cosy offices at Yaba, Lagos, to accuse, judge and summarily convict Sokoto state government for the “crime” of failure to upload its budget details online. The summary conviction attracted the severe punishment of a scandalous fiscal transparency league table ranking and the skewed write-up that portrayed hardworking political leaders in a bad light.
“Gladly, the reality in Sokoto state is different from the fictional negativity that BudgIT has tried to portray with its tendentious fiscal transparency chart. The budgetary responsibility credentials of the Sokoto state administration under Gov Ahmad Aliyu Sokoto are evident and unequalled.
“This can be seen from the fact that the government delivered over 186 impactful infrastructural projects in the 18 months, honoured all its obligations to workers, retirees and creditors, and has sustained critical social welfare programmes for its citizens, all this without ever approaching any commercial bank for a loan facility.
“Any government that can faithfully and aggressively pursue its campaign programmes and meet its obligations, without increasing taxes on its people or dragging into the quicksand of debt, does not need nebulous transparency tutorials from any NGO on how to dress up budget data, and when to upload fiscal informatics on the internet.”
Jacobs, however, advises Governor Ahmad Aliyu to focus on the many good things he is doing to advance education, build and maintain roads, expand water supply, promote agriculture, improve access to healthcare, and the creative use of agro-forestry to protect the environment while producing food and cash crops, among other things listed in the now famous nine-point agenda.
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