By Usman Ibrahim

Adebayo’s open-books proposal

The question is not simply how much government spends. Every Nigerian understands that government needs money. Police officers need salaries. Hospitals need equipment. Schools need teachers. Roads need construction and maintenance. Security operations require funding. Social protection costs money. The harder question is whether the money available to government is being converted into sufficient public value. This question has become increasingly important because Nigeria’s fiscal room remains constrained. The International Monetary Fund estimated that interest payments absorbed about 53 per cent of Federal Government revenue in 2025, while the consolidated government deficit was estimated at 4.4 per cent of GDP. For 2026, IMF projections put the consolidated fiscal deficit at about 4.7 per cent of GDP. These numbers do not mean that government should simply stop spending. They mean that every naira has become more consequential. Fiscal discipline is therefore not an accounting obsession. It is a development issue.

When Debt Crowds Out Development
Borrowing can be economically sensible when it finances productive investment capable of generating future returns. Borrowing to build a productive railway, transmission infrastructure, irrigation system or industrial corridor can create economic capacity that outlives the debt. Borrowing to sustain inefficient recurrent expenditure is different. Nigeria must become more rigorous about this distinction. When debt-service obligations consume a large share of public revenue, fewer resources remain available for education, healthcare, infrastructure and productive investment. The opportunity cost is paid by citizens through weaker services and slower development. The answer is not necessarily to reject borrowing. It is to improve the quality of expenditure and the transparency of borrowing. The country’s fiscal authorities already publish budget documents and implementation reports. The Budget Office of the Federation maintains a public repository of appropriation documents and budget implementation information. The next step is to make such information more useful to ordinary citizens. A budget should not merely answer how much government plans to spend. It should make it possible to ask what citizens received in return.

From Budget Inputs To Public Outcomes
Nigeria’s budget culture has traditionally placed considerable emphasis on allocations. But allocation is not achievement. A ministry may receive billions of naira for a programme. That does not automatically mean that schools improved, hospitals became functional or roads were completed. Government should therefore shift more aggressively from input-based accountability to outcome-based accountability. For every major programme, citizens should be able to know: What was promised? How much was budgeted? How much was released? What was actually spent? What was delivered? Who benefited? What changed? These questions should apply not only to major federal ministries but also to state and local institutions. The principle is simple: public money should generate public evidence.

Transparency Is An Economic Policy
It is tempting to regard transparency as an issue for auditors, journalists and civil-society organisations. It is much more than that. Transparent public finance can improve economic efficiency because it reduces uncertainty, strengthens investor confidence and makes it harder for resources to disappear between appropriation and implementation. It can also improve citizen trust. A citizen who can see what was budgeted for a local road, what contractor received the contract, how much was paid and whether the road was completed is in a stronger position than a citizen who is told only that government is “working.” This is particularly important at the local level, where citizens often experience government most directly. Adebayo’s Open-Books Proposal

Prince Adewole Adebayo’s current policy blueprint proposes that Nigeria’s 774 local governments publish quarterly information on revenues and expenditures—including statutory allocations, internally generated revenue, grants, contracts and major capital spending—through a publicly accessible digital platform. It also proposes digital tools through which citizens can monitor projects, submit complaints and access government performance information. This is one of the more concrete institutional ideas in his programme because it addresses the information gap between government and citizens. The principle is not revolutionary. Around the world, governments have increasingly used digital platforms to make budget and procurement information more accessible. Its importance in Nigeria lies in the scale of the accountability challenge. However, publication alone is not enough. If local governments publish incomprehensible spreadsheets that citizens cannot interpret, transparency becomes a ritual rather than accountability. If citizens report irregularities but no institution investigates them, digital complaints become another dead end. Open government must therefore be linked to enforcement. Discipline Must Apply to Everyone

Fiscal reform also requires a political culture capable of accepting limits. Government cannot promise everything to everyone. There will always be competing demands for roads, salaries, subsidies, security, education, healthcare and social programmes. A credible fiscal system must establish priorities and explain them. This means resisting politically convenient expenditure that has little developmental value. It also means strengthening revenue collection without placing unreasonable burdens on productive businesses and households.

The IMF has argued that faster gains in revenue mobilisation could create additional fiscal space for growth-enhancing priority spending. At the same time, it has stressed the importance of prioritising vulnerable households and maintaining credible macroeconomic policies. That balance matters. Fiscal discipline should not become an excuse for abandoning social protection. Nor should social spending become an excuse for refusing to confront waste. The objective is a government that spends carefully because citizens’ needs are too important to permit waste.

The Politics Of Measurable Government
Adebayo’s broader governing philosophy is explicitly performance-oriented. His blueprint proposes named institutions, quarterly milestones and public dashboards for its major presidential missions. This approach deserves scrutiny precisely because it creates measurable standards against which a government could be judged. The challenge, as always, would be implementation. Dashboards can become decorative. Targets can be manipulated. Agencies can report activities rather than outcomes. The solution is independent verification and consequences. If a government says it will build a specified number of schools, citizens should be able to verify them. If it promises improved electricity supply, the measurement should involve actual reliability rather than announcements. If it promises procurement transparency, contracts and payments should be traceable. Accountability must move from speeches to evidence.

Restoring The Value Of Public Money
Nigeria’s fiscal problem is not simply that government needs more revenue. It is also that citizens need more value from the revenue government already controls. A stronger fiscal culture would therefore combine realistic revenue mobilisation, disciplined borrowing, transparent procurement, rigorous project selection and public reporting of results. The objective should be neither austerity for its own sake nor unlimited government spending. It should be value. This is the broader relevance of Adebayo’s emphasis on transparent government and open books.

Whether the proposed mechanisms would work at national scale remains a question for serious examination. But the underlying principle is difficult to dispute: government should be able to show citizens where their money went and what it achieved. A country cannot build public trust simply by asking citizens to pay more taxes. It must demonstrate that public money is being treated as a public trust. That is the real meaning of fiscal discipline.

*Ibrahim sent this piece from Abuja.