Abuja: A non-governmental organisation (NGO), International Budget Partnership (IBP), Nigeria, has stressed the need for governments to ensure public participation in Nigeria’s debt management for more transparency and accountability. The Country Director of IBP, Olayinka Babalola, stated this on Tuesday in Abuja at a news conference on the findings of the Open Budget Survey (OBS) 2025, the debt accountability module for Nigeria.
According to News Agency of Nigeria, Babalola said that the assessment revealed that public participation in debt management was very weak, stating that the connection between borrowing and visible outcomes for citizens remained weak and often unclear. The survey highlighted important gaps in transparency, oversight, and public participation in the management of Nigeria’s public debt. Babalola mentioned that there were very few structured opportunities for the public, civil society, media, and other stakeholders to engage specifically on borrowing plans, debt levels, or fiscal deficits before key decisions were finalised.
Babalola explained that public debt is no longer just a technical issue for economists, debt managers, or government officials but has become a public issue affecting fiscal space, service delivery, trust in public institutions, and ultimately, the ability of citizens to understand how government borrowing decisions affect their lives. According to her, the Open Budget Survey is the world’s only comparative, independent, and regular assessment of transparency, oversight, and participation in national budgets. It is widely used to assess whether budget systems provide the information and accountability needed for public scrutiny.
She further detailed that the debt accountability module is a pilot extension of their work, developed because debt has become an increasingly important part of fiscal policy in many countries, including Nigeria. However, the accountability side of debt management is often less visible than the numbers themselves. For Nigeria, the assessment was based on publicly available information from Jan. 1, 2023, to Dec. 31, 2024, examining four key areas: the legal and institutional framework, debt transparency, debt oversight, and public participation.
Babalola emphasised that although Nigeria already had the four key structures, the system had refused to work in a way that would make debt accountability clear, consistent, and accessible. She noted that while public documents and formal rules for the legislature and the auditor-general exist, debt information is not presented in a single accessible way that allows citizens, legislators, journalists, or analysts to clearly see what is being borrowed, on what terms, and for what intended purpose. Oversight was noted to be stronger in law than in practice, with limited publicly available evidence of detailed legislative review of debt strategy during the budget process.
Addressing the gaps, she emphasised three priority areas for reform: transparency, oversight, and participation, stating that Nigeria needed more practical and consolidated disclosure of borrowing information. On oversight, debt strategy and borrowing decisions needed to be more meaningfully examined within the budget process, including strengthening legislative review beyond formal approvals and expanding audit attention to include periodic performance assessment of public debt management.
Babalola also noted that if public debt was shaping the country’s fiscal future, there must be clearer and early opportunities for citizens and stakeholders to engage on borrowing funds, debt levels, and fiscal trade-offs before key decisions were finalised. On his part, Mr. Onyekachi Chukwu, Senior Programme Coordinator, Strategy and Policy, IBP, stressed the need for responsible borrowing, highlighting that the real issue is not only how much is borrowed but whether borrowing decisions are governed in ways that are transparent, accountable, and connected to public interest.