In the year 525 BCE, the Egyptian Army faced off against the Persians in what would become known as the Battle of Pelusium.
The Persians knew the Egyptians very well and knew how much the Egyptians venerated cats, as a representative of their goddess Bastet, often depicted with the body of a svelte woman and the head of a feline. So, the Persian emperor, Cambyses II, ordered his soldiers to brand their armours with the symbol of the cat and had them carry the creatures to the battlefield.
When the Egyptians saw this, they were reluctant to shoot at the Persians for fear of injuring the cats among them or desecrating the symbol of their revered goddess and suffering eternal damnation in the afterlife. In the end, the Egyptians lost the war and their kingdom with Cambyses II taking the Pharaoh’s throne.
Brawns are useful in battle but the greatest victories have been achieved using brains. A lesson Nigeria will do well to master.
From time immemorial, Nigeria has been locked in an endless battle with corruption. In this tussle of good vs evil, the country has often relied on brawn rather than its number six.
The prevailing thinking has been that seizing corrupt officials and throwing them in gulags would bring about sanity in the system, and this is only for governments inclined to fight corruption.
While many Nigerians have focused on corruption at the centre, the shady dealings that have been deeply entrenched in the states or subnational level where public officials are quietly siphoning billions have continued unabated.
Finding records of public expenditures at that level was akin to the quest for the Holy Grail—an endless journey of woes, frustration and a long line of snickering government officials smiling at their looted funds and fanatical about protecting their thieving ways with as much devotion as the Egyptians had to their cat goddess.
In the last two to three years, however, this has changed. At least 33, out of Nigeria’s 36 states have their budgets available online with audited accounts statements. And it seems the budgets in these states since 2020 have been citizen-driven with widespread consultations at ward levels before the budgets are drafted.
What happened? Why the change overnight?
Apparently, the government, like Cambyses II, decided to understand the enemy, in this case, corruption and lack of accountability at the subnational level, and throw the cats among the Persians.
In 2016, the federal government introduced a World Bank Assisted programme, the States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS), which uses a performance-based incentive system by providing attractive grants to state governments that meet some eligibility criteria in terms of accountability, transparency and putting citizens’ needs front and centre of their budgets.
It is simple logic. Consult your people before drawing up a budget, with evidence of this consultation and we will give you a grant for this. Publish your budget with audited account statements within a certain timeframe and we will give you more grants, smoke out the ghosts on your payroll by unleashing BVN on them and we will give you more grants.
It is a reward system for doing what one ought to do normally and the results have been encouraging. The World Bank approved the programme in June 2018, it came into effect in May 2019.
In the first year the programme took off, some states complied. After the Annual Performance Appraisal, they got the grants that came in handy in the COVID-19 year of 2020.
The lure of the incentive-based aid in return for some transparency and accountability was too strong to resist. And this year, practically all the states have jumped on this ship.
Apparently, the programme aims to increase fiscal transparency and accountability through improved quality, timeliness and transparency of State Annual Budget including Public Consultation and citizen engagement.
It also aspires to strengthen domestic revenue mobilisation and plugging leakages through the implementation of a state-level TSA.
Are these feasible in the short term?
It would seem so, as the states have been scrambling to meet the Eligibility Criteria for the disbursement of the grants by being more open about their processes and spending.
This year, Sokoto State got the highest performance-based grants of N6.612 billion with Kano shoring up the rear of the list with N1.710 billion. Of Nigeria’s 36 states, only Bayelsa, Imo, Rivers and Zamfara states failed to meet the criteria for 2019 by not publishing online the approved annual budgets and audited financial statements within a specific timeframe. They left the gathering of states without the rattle of a kobo in their bowls.
Speaking of Kobos, there is a lot of it involved in this programme. The entire architecture of the programme is based on an initial loan of $750 million from the International Development Association (IDA), a member of the World Bank Group for a programme designed to run from 2018 to 2022. This loan might be doubled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of these, the federal government has already disbursed N233 billion to the states after assessments of their performances in the specified indicators by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation.
The results of the programme are not in doubt, with civil society groups like BudgIT keeping a hawk-eye and commending the strategy. It is clear that in a few short years, it has empowered the public and the media with the information needed to hold public officials at the subnational level to account, and has managed to achieve results that the usual stick approach has failed to in the past.
If such a strategy were deployed at the national level— especially in the defence sector where a glaring lack of transparency and accountability has enabled questionable spending and shocking profligacy such as the Dasuki Gate and most recently, the suspicion that the immediate past service chiefs have not accounted for funds meant for weapons procurements—it could have made a difference. One can only imagine if such a programme is in effect at this level and makes available records of who should be held accountable for what funds, how so much efficiency and accountability there would have been.
While the World Bank-assisted SFTAS is a brilliant strategy to incentivize performance, accountability and transparency and citizen participation in governance, just like the Persian cat strategy at the Battle of Pelusium, it raises some concerns. Why drag poor cats into the war of men? What happens to them if they end up injured or killed?
In the instance of SFTAS, despite the undeniable results, questions persist. The most fundamental being: what are the terms of the loans that made this programme possible and how does the federal government intend to pay back?
The other concern is essentially sentimental. The fact that public officers in this country need to be enticed with grants that they could expend on any project of their choosing to perform what they swore to do—to be accountable, transparent and efficient, is a source of concern. It was a question I struggled with until in a conversation with Gabriel Okeowo, the Principal Lead/CEO, BudgIT Foundation, he summed it up: “When SFTAS ends [in 2022], what happens?”
Nigeria would have to find a more sustainable way for public officials to be accountable and transparent and to carry the people along. But for now, this is a good way to show that it is possible. Sometimes you have to put the cats between you and the Egyptians to make headway.
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