Otu Otu Ita, the Special Adviser to Governor Basssey Otu on Budget Monitoring and Evaluation, has stated that the 2025 Budget performance will be more than last year.
According to him, the performance of last year was 85 per cent, and this year will be 9 per cent. Otu Otu disclosed this at a five-day Capacity Building Workshop on Medium Term Expenditure Framework Strategy Paper (MTE/ FSP and Medium Term Sector Strategy ( MTSS) at Danic Hotel, Calabar, Cross River State. te
” Basically, the main purpose of this workshop is to strengthen public finance management in Cross River State.”
“Our expectation is that we are actually going to have a technical session where budget officers in Cross River State and planning recession statistics officers in Cross River State will be taught the rudiment of budgeting”
” We want to ensure that we have a plan-based budgeting in Cross River State, where it will match our revenue to our expenditure, where allocations of resources will not just be based on any assumption, except on proper economic analysis”
.”This workshop will bring? I think from 2021 we have actually strengthened our processes, but we will continue to improve”
‘That is why we are grateful to UNICEF for putting up this workshop. We are hoping that we will learn best practices in the course of this workshop. And then in terms of our budget performance, I think we want to review the 2024 budget”
“Our 2024 budget performed about 85%. And for 2025, the budget we are currently implementing as at close of the business in second quarter of 2025, we had about 35% budget performance. So what is the prediction for this year? We are hoping that we will do about 90%”
“We are very, very hopeful because we had reason to review 2025 budget sometime in the month of June and that bill was signed into law in the month of August. And the reason why we had that new law is because we had new revenue projections and we had guarantee such as the revenue that were coming into Cross River State. So for that reason, we had a supplementary provision of about $104 billion”
“And for us, the supplementary means our budget is already performing and we are very, very optimistic that the programs in Cross River State which are all tailored to benefit and impact directly the people living in Cross River State will perform very well. Any leakage? Because of our public finance management is being structured in Cross River State, we really have issues of leakages because from the approval stage, you have a proper due diligence being followed before releases are made. And even after releases are made, when expenditure are being incurred, there is also several things including the Cross River State Assembly who have the responsibility of oversight and even budget of his initial finance auditor general”.
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In his remarks, the UNICEF representative Victor Chiama, a Social Policy Expert who represented Enugu Chief of Field Office for UNICEF, Juliet Chilw, stated that” we expect that budgetary allocations will be improved for these sectors. We expect that the priorities, activities, and programs will be tailored towards the key elements of the state’s priorities and state development plan, and we expect that with more advocacy, there will be appropriate release of funds, and that implementation will be guided according to best practices.
“We work? We work in partnership with the states to implement state priorities. Yes, in the state development plan, the stakeholders across the MDAs met and had discussions around what they want to achieve for their MDAs, and that is in line with what the government of the state wants to also achieve. Now, we support these MDAs towards integrating these desired outcomes, and also help with budgeting.
The targets that are set are targets that the state wants to achieve in terms of its excellence and priorities. UNICEF’s support is to help the state achieve this, both in terms of capacity building, in terms of technical assistance, and also in terms of financial support in some other elements of the state’s priorities.
Oluwasola Omoju, Public Finance Management Expert, says that if you listen to the presentation carefully, you’ll see that we try to at least emphasise the fact that over the years, our budget has not really had an impact on the lives of the people.
” I think we’re able to show that with some statistics to show that government is spending a lot of money, right? But people are not seeing that an improvement in their standard of living, right? Now, when you look at all those things, there are so many things that is happening in this. Starting from the preparation of the budget. Now, when you look at what the constitution says, the constitution says that the budget should be presented at any time,”
‘So at any time means to anybody, right? So the president can wake up tomorrow and say he’s going to present the budget. He can wake up on December 20 and say he’s going to present the budget. So that makes it very difficult for proper planning of how the budget calendar is supposed to be, right? So now, but it’s very important to have some of this reform to say, okay, the budget must be presented maybe by September 30″
” So if there’s a clear timeline, the budget is presented in September 30. Then maybe by November 30, the budget is already passed by either the National Assembly or the State Assembly. So the most important thing is before January 1st, the budget should be signed so that when we move into the next year, the budget is at least ready to be implemented”
These are some of the important reforms. But the current situation, where the president can arbitrarily just present the budget any day he feels like, also always makes it very difficult to have a very predictable budget calendar. And you can have a situation where you’re already in February of the next year, you don’t have a budget”
‘This reflects on other states. Yeah, I think to a large extent, a lot of the states… Including the governors. Yeah, to a large extent”
“But now, a lot of states are beginning to improve. I mentioned one particular project called SIFTAS that was funded by the World Bank a few years ago. So that project actually came up with a lot of very big reform in terms of calendar.”
“So there’s a particular… So a lot of states now, by August, by September, the budget must be presented. By a particular date, it must be approved by the State Assembly. And before… Latest by December 31st, it must be signed by… So a lot of states have improved significantly in this area”
“They book your business class. They put you in five-star hotel. Now, when you want to start asking questions, you know, it might be very difficult for you to ask those very difficult”
“Oh, that is a very big challenge with oversight. And this challenge is even more difficult at the state level. Now, the national assembly has financial autonomy.’
“State assemblies don’t. So state assembly now, most of the state assembly, whenever they need money for their budget, they have to get money from the governor. Just imagine now your state assembly, your work is actually to check whatever the governor is doingd”
Now, you need money to go and check the governor. You are asking the governor. Can you just look at the logic? So that is complicated.
“So we need to have reforms in that area so that our legislature, they are not just robust term. They are independent and they have the necessary resources to actually do what they are supposed to do. Reforms in that area”
“Can you be a bit specific? Are you saying that the budget should be made available for the national assembly? So currently, the national assembly has their own budget. They have their own budget, which is made available to them. It’s independent”
“But of course, within the national assembly, all that budget is now allocated to different activities, committees. It’s another thing entirely. But state government don’t have that”
“Right, so national assembly now, at the beginning of the budget, they have their own budget. So they don’t have to go and ask President Sinombu that we want to do this. Give us money,”
“They have their own budget. They pay their staff. They pay their aid”
“They can conduct all their activities. But state assemblies don’t have that. So everything that a state assembly wants to do, they still have to go and get money from the executive”
“So we do call on the national assembly not to depend on organizations that want to run the tech to give them money for oversight. So no, I think what we just need to, at least these are some of the issues that are well known. And we need to start thinking about how can we make some of this committee to be extremely independent in terms of resources”
“So I think these are some of the reforms that need to take place within the national assembly, within the legislature itself. So I think these things are well known. Everybody knows this”
“At the state level, who holds the office of the Public Accounts Committee? So according to the law, the office of the Public Accounts Committee is supposed to be headed by an opposition. And that is what the law says. But in case you have a state, most state assemblies now, almost everybody in the assembly is in one party”
“So in that case, you still need to have a Public Accounts Committee. So anybody in the assembly just becomes the chairman. So that also undermines the cchecksand balances that we are expecting to have. “
