Nigeria—State Accountability, Transparency, and Effectiveness (State2State) Activity

The Nigeria State Accountability, Transparency, and Effectiveness (State2State) Activity supports strengthened governance structures in six states in Nigeria to improve their ability to plan and budget, raise revenues, increase civil society participation, and oversee service delivery in the health; education; and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sectors. State2State works primarily at the state level, but also supports federal institutions and local government areas.

State2State specifically recognizes the role of the state governors and commissioners in driving forward reforms in Nigeria, but, importantly, gives equal weight to the essential role that national fiscal and development policy, citizen demand, and local innovation, collaboration, and learning across and among states play in solving governance, financing, and service delivery challenges.

We partner with key Nigerian organizations to capture, document, and share best practices in budgeting, planning, revenue mobilization, audit, procurement, internal controls, policy monitoring and evaluation, gender, and conflict mitigation—ensuring with our partner states that this information becomes available to states across Nigeria.

Sample Activities

• Harness the rapid expansion of technology to foster networks and connectivity, improve access to government services, and enhance administrative systems.
• Cultivate a culture of learning across our networked staffing structure and use tested monitoring and evaluation tools—political economy analysis and thinking and working politically to track political will, and capacity assessments—to inform implementation.
• Strengthen the governance structures and capacity necessary to improve service delivery performance.
• Strengthen partnerships among independent state bureaus of procurement or due process offices, agencies, state ministries of finance, SHoAs, auditors, civil society actors, and the private sector.

Select Results

• Reviewed consolidated state and revenue codes in Ebonyi and Adamawa and established seven new codes that were adopted by the states and used for the 2022 budgets.
• Supported states in increasing their World Bank States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability, and Sustainability Program standing.
• Developed a Public Procurement Procedure Manual (PPPM) for Ebonyi State. The manual will guide the implementation of public procurement law, provide Ebonyi with an opportunity to create a cadre of procurement professionals to work in its public service, and will serve as a powerful advocacy tool for civil society groups by facilitating more transparency in the public procurement process.
• Supported grantee Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) in developing a free app and web platform called Office of the Citizens that enable citizens to monitor and report public budget implementation and track project completion across all 20 local government areas in Bauchi State, promoting citizen participation and state budget transparency.
• Helped Adamawa State develop the Adamawa State Fiscal Responsibility Manual to serve as a roadmap, clarify roles and responsibilities of the Adamawa State Fiscal Responsibility Commission, and simplifies provisions of the 2021 Adamawa State Fiscal Responsibility Law.
• Supported Akwa Ibom State in passing the Water Resource Bill into law; Akwa Ibom is now the first state in the country to adopt the national version of the bill at the state level.
• Supported Gombe state whose internally generated revenue increased from Naira 10.02 billion in 2021 to Naira 15.63 billion in 2023. Collaborative efforts and training by State2State played a crucial role in achieving this growth.