Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Nigera: not transparent

Another study of government transparency reaches conclusions similar to those of Transparency Intenational. Nigerian governmental processes are not very open. This report is by Constance Ikokwu and appeared in ThisDay (Lagos).

Country Ranks Low in Budget Transparency

"Nigeria is among 25 countries in the world that provide scant or no budget information to enable the public hold the government accountable for managing their money, according to a new comprehensive study conducted by the influential International Budget Partnership (IBP)...

"The survey which was launched in Washington, D.C. Monday lists Nigeria, Cambodia, Nicaragua, China, Burkina Faso, Fiji, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Yemen, Afghanistan, Chad, Bolivia, Cameroon, Angola, Senegal and Kyrgyz in the "poor performing" group...

"Top performing countries, according to the report, score above 80 out of a possible 100 points in the Open Budget Index 2008 (OBI). The average score for the OBI 2008 is 39, indicating that governments on average provide minimal information on their budge and financial activities.

"Nigeria scored 19...

"'Open budgets are empowering. They allow people to be the judge of whether or not their government officials are good stewards of public funds,' Director of the IBP, Warren Krafchik, said.

"'Our goal is to promote increased public access to government budget information. We've seen how this can lead to concrete improvements in people's lives,' he added..."


See also:

Labels: , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home