Accountability Lab Nigeria has warned that excluding women and community members from public budget decisions could leave critical needs such as maternal healthcare, social protection and support for informal businesses inadequately addressed.

The organisation urged federal and state governments to adopt inclusive budgeting processes that allow women, civil society organisations, community representatives and other stakeholders to influence spending priorities and the design of public projects.

The Country Director of Accountability Lab Nigeria, Friday Odeh, made the call at a technical workshop on the co-design of a gender-responsive budgeting assessment toolkit, supported by the Canadian Fund for Local Initiatives.

The workshop was organised to assess how effectively government budget processes reflect the needs of different groups in society and identify gaps in the allocation of public resources.

Odeh said governments should move away from the traditional top-down approach to budget planning and create opportunities for citizens to participate in decisions affecting public expenditure.

He argued that budget decisions have different implications for different groups, making it necessary for governments to consider the specific needs of women and other vulnerable populations when allocating 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,” Odeh said.

He urged stakeholders across different sectors to contribute to the budgeting process, stressing that gender-responsive budgeting should also extend to the community level.

According to him, cultural practices and household arrangements sometimes prevent women from participating in decisions affecting their welfare and economic activities.

“In some families, women don’t speak; they don’t make decisions. They don’t even contribute to how much you earn,” he said.

Odeh also 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 circumstances.

He said Accountability Lab planned to engage between 20 and 30 ministries, departments and agencies to share findings from the assessment and encourage the integration of gender considerations into government projects.

He added that the organisation would work with researchers and public officials to examine existing budget practices and develop recommendations for improving public spending.

Also speaking, the Programmes and Learning Manager at Accountability Lab Nigeria, Ehi Idakwo, said the limited participation of women in budget formulation had contributed to the neglect of their needs in government policies and social protection programmes.

Idakwo said women constituted a significant proportion of Nigeria’s population and played important roles in the economy, particularly through informal businesses and other activities that sustain households and local markets.

She argued 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.

She said government intervention programmes should be designed around people’s actual needs rather than access to personal connections with public officials.

Idakwo 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.

However, 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.

She 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 challenges confronting efforts to improve women’s representation in public decision-making.

Idakwo said the organisation intended to examine government budget documents and conduct further research to identify ways of integrating gender considerations into public spending.

The proposed assessment toolkit is expected to help stakeholders evaluate existing budget practices and identify gaps in how government projects address the needs of women and other groups in society.