Nigeria—Technical Assistance to Strengthen Public Financial Management, Statistics, Monitoring, and Evaluation Systems

In Yobe state, Nigeria, high levels of poverty and insufficient access to social services, combined with the effect of Boko Haram crisis on social infrastructure and the livelihoods of citizens, call for a broader fiscal space and improved delivery of basic services.

This project assisted Yobe State in building upon the significant progress made so far in fiscal transparency and discipline, by finding ways to broaden the fiscal space sustainably while ensuring improved delivery of public goods and services.

The project fell under the European Union’s support for early recovery from conflict and resilience building in Yobe State. DAI’s technical assistance team worked with local government officials, civil servants, and civil society to support public finance management reform and improve statistics, monitoring, accountability, and reporting, including legislative scrutiny, third-party monitoring, and budget tracking by citizens. The team worked to strengthen the state’s aggregate fiscal discipline and ensure more efficient allocation and use of resources.

Sample Activities

• Identify areas where transformative and sustainable reforms are possible and require further support based on experiences to date and the needs of the government.
• Identify areas for reform or system strengthening based on engagement with civil society groups.
• Identify entry points for engagement at the state and local levels and capacity building needs to strengthen the capacity of state institutions and critical nonstate actors in the field of public financial management, monitoring and evaluation, and reporting.
• Design and implement reform support programs and building capacity to further enhance financial management and reporting.
• Establish and build on channels of dialogue with civil society organizations to feedback on progress achieved so far.

Select Results

• Contributed to Yobe State winning the Overall Top Performer on State Fiscal Transparency, by the World Bank in November 2022. The award was based on performance in all disbursement link indicators, an area of intervention for the project.
• Helped reduce the actual nominal difference between domestic resources (internally generated revenue) and recurrent expenditure.
• Supported Yobe State Ministry of Finance and Board of Internal Revenue to improve in tax policy and internally generated revenue administration.
• Developed the capacity of at least 20 members of the public accounts committee and finance appropriation committee on legislative scrutiny of the annual budget proposal, audit reports, fiscal reports and frameworks, and debt management reports.
• Strengthened the capacity of at least 20 staff of the office of the local government auditor general on audit reporting using the IPSAS format and in line with standard practices.