By Yunus Abubakar
The Accountability Lab, Nigeria has urged federal and state governments to involve women and community members in budget planning.
It warned that women exclusion from decisions on public spending risks leaving critical needs such as maternal healthcare, social protection and support for informal businesses inadequately addressed.
Friday Odeh. Country Director Accountability Lab Nigeria,made the call on Wednesday at a technical workshop on the co-design of a gender-responsive budgeting assessment toolkit, which seeks to assess how effectively budget processes reflect the needs of different groups in society.
Udeh said governments should move beyond top-down budget planning and create opportunities for citizens, civil society organisations, the private sector and the media to influence spending priorities and the design of public projects.
He stated that budget decisions affect people differently, making it necessary to consider the specific needs of women and other vulnerable groups when allocating public resources.
He identified gender-based violence, women’s participation in the informal economy, maternal healthcare and access to essential services as areas requiring greater attention in government budgets.
“Not just governments sitting in a major national budget planning office and designing budgets for all of us, but all of us are citizens,” Udeh said, urging stakeholders across different sectors to contribute to the budgeting process.
He also called for gender-responsive budgeting to extend to the community level, where cultural practices and household arrangements sometimes prevent women from participating in decisions affecting their welfare and economic lives.
“In some families, women don’t speak, they don’t make decisions. They don’t even contribute to how much you earn,” he said.
Udeh warned that governments sometimes overlook the needs of women and persons with disabilities when planning infrastructure and public services, resulting in projects that fail to adequately address their needs.
He said the Accountability Lab planned to engage about 20 to 30 ministries, departments and agencies to share feedback from the assessment and encourage the integration of gender considerations into government projects.
The organisation also intends to work with researchers and public officials to examine existing budget practices and develop recommendations for improving public spending.
The Programmes and Learning Manager at Accountability Lab, Ehi Idakwo, said women’s limited participation in budget formulation had contributed to the neglect of their needs in government policies and social protection programmes.
Idakwo noted that women constitute a substantial proportion of Nigeria’s population and play a significant role in the economy, particularly through informal businesses and other activities that sustain households and local markets.
She noted that their economic contributions should translate into greater participation in decisions on public expenditure and improved access to essential services.
According to her, women working in informal occupations, including petty trading, hairdressing and waste picking, often lack adequate access to healthcare, pensions and other forms of social protection.
Idakwo said government support programmes should respond to people’s actual needs rather than depend on personal connections with officials.
She also called for more opportunities for women and community members to influence government priorities, noting that some states had introduced participatory budgeting processes at the local government level.
She said similar opportunities remained limited at the federal level, where women and informal-sector workers were often excluded from discussions about proposed public projects.
Idakwo also cited the rejection of the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill by the National Assembly and the lack of progress on proposed reserved legislative seats for women as examples of the challenges confronting efforts to improve women’s representation.
She said the Accountability Lab intended to examine government budget documents and conduct further research to identify ways to integrate gender considerations into public spending.
The proposed assessment toolkit is expected to help stakeholders evaluate budget practices and identify gaps in how government projects address the needs of women and other groups.
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