Kaduna State government offers better transparency when it comes to access to information about public finance management and public governance practices. The 2019 ICAN Accountability Index (ICAN-AI) Report has shown.
The report identified that Kaduna State was more open to information pertaining to policy based fiscal strategy and budgeting; management of assets and debts; budget credibility; control in budget execution; accounting and reporting and external audit and legislative scrutiny.
Kaduna State ranked first with an overall score of 72.7 percent of the five pillars accessed in the 2019 retaining the same position according to the 2018 report finding too.
Also, Enugu State according to the report scored an overall 58.2 percent to occupy the second position, while Jigawa State scored an overall 55.9 percent to take the third position.
The report also indicated that Imo, Adamawa and Edo States occupied the 35th, 36th and 37 positions respectively in the ranking of the states with low access to information about public finance management and public governance practices.
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Ismaila Muhammadu Zakari, chairman of the ICAN-AI steering committee while presenting the report in Lagos said The ICAN Accountability Index report is a tool designed to modify both the overt and convert behaviours of those charged with governance and accountability, induce reforms, healthy competition between and among states, empower citizens and ensure continuous improvements in public finance management.
Zakari said the Assessment was carried out under the supervision of the ICAN-AI steering committee and shows that the worst performer in terms of transparency was Edo State where access to relevant information required were only 3 percent compared to Kaduna State where access to information was 87 percent.
Onome Joy Adewuyi, 56th President of Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) said one of the central objectives of the ICAN-AI is the need for governments to publicly make available relevant fiscal information which facilitate the assessment of their PFM practices.
Adewuyi while speaking at the presentation observed that some governments in the country have not yet fully adopted global best practices in terms of transparency and making relevant financial information publicly available.
According to her, “the dismal results of the Aggregate Country Performance by Pillar in the 2019 ICAN-AI Report support our mission to escalate our level of advocacy for improvement in public finance management transparency and accountability.
“It is imperative that all governments assessed in the Report consider the improvement/decline in their ICAN-AI rankings as a KPI for assessing relevant government functionaries” Adewuyi said.
