Nigerians and 2023 elections: Prioritizing public accountability for social development

By Sunday Timothy Taiwo

These cited narratives are fractions of the many gross public sector misconducts which have not only created a big trust gap between citizens and government officials but gravely hinders socioeconomic development in the country.
Critical, but less discussed in the lead up to the 2023 Elections is the state of accountability in the Nigeria public sector. In a democracy, elections are pivotal to public administration, development and democratic sustainability being the sole legal instrument that allows for citizens to decide and elect their representatives at the helm of affairs where governance and policy-making mechanisms are developed over time.
Howbeit, it’s no gainsaying that no critical development effort can succeed without a government that is responsive and accountable to its citizens. Being accountable is a burden that is placed on the public sector when it accepts responsibility for exercising powers on behalf of the public; as the people entrust in a candidate their collective mandate by voting into power, it is both constitutionally and morally expected of such a candidate to work effectively towards fulfilling his/her end of the social contract.
In Nigeria, public accountability is a dwindling phenomenon, and amidst nations of the world, the country has attained a high level of public sector corruption and gross mismanagement of public finance which has impacted greatly on our corporate development from local, state, to national level.
Nigeria, having dropped from 26 in 2019, to 25 in 2020, and 24 in 2021 assessment, the country again stood at 24 of 100 in the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) of Transparency International (TI). Through the CPI, TI measures the level of public sector corruption in the systems of 180 countries around the world and rank accordingly. Ranked 150 of 180 with CPI score of 24 attests to the fact that despite the current administration’s commitment to battle corrupt practices, corruption in Nigeria’s public sector has grossly worsened in the last 4 years even.
Paradigm Leadership Support Initiative (PLSI)’s analysis of the 2019 audit report of the federation revealed that the sum of N455.14bn was not accounted for by 70 MDAs of the federal government, being 20.69% of the N2.2tn total funds released in 2019 fiscal year. Similarly, its Subnational Audit Efficacy Index 2021 which assessed accountability levels in the management of public funds across the 36 states in Nigeria revealed that only 11 out of the 36 states of the federation assessed, conducted either performance or compliance audit on public expenditure in 2020. This translates to the fact that 25 Offices of State Auditors-General did not adhere to procurement and financial regulations by government MDAs which limits their state’s ability to achieve value for money on programs and projects implemented in the year 2020.

Sunday Timothy Taiwo is a Public Policy Analyst.