By Emmanuel Ado
While some parts of Kaduna State was having the “festival of disagreements”, which unfortunately led to the breakdown of law and order, many Nigerians were unaware of some very positive developments – the Sun newspaper proclaiming the Nasir Ahmed El-Rufai, the Kaduna State Governor, its Man of the Year 2018 and the obvious icing on the cake, being the declaration of Kaduna state as the Number One in Transparency and Open Governance in Nigeria in the “Open State Government Ranking” by the Public and Private Development Center (PPDC) as part of its annual good governance and transparency initiative.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAN) has also declared the state as “very accountable”. The awards are no doubt richly deserved, considering the hard work and the determination of the Nasir El-Rufai team from the very outset to be more accountable.
According to the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB), which works to improve public sector financial reporting worldwide “access to government spending information is a fundamental pillar of an accountable government” because it provides a basis for citizen participation, and ultimately promotes government integrity, greater efficiency.
The need for public sector reforms became imperative largely because the reporting systems didn’t cover all aspects of government budgeting and more importantly its spending. For government to deliver services it must track where every kobo goes from appropriation to expenditure, which is the beauty of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS).
Fundamentally this is the raison d’etre for the adoption and implementation of accrual accounting and International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) for the preparation and implementation of budgets. The desire of the Nasir El-Rufai to usher in a regime of transparency was manifest when days after taking over the Treasury Single Account (TSA) was implemented. The exercise led to the recovery of over N24 billion which government had lost track of and was in fact borrowing in several instances its own money and paying huge interests to the thieving Nigerian commercial banks. What Kaduna State Government has effectively done is to tackle poor public finance management and reporting.
Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State is a convinced and unrepentant reformist going by Macmillan dictionary definition of a reformist as one “wanting to change and improve society or an institution”. Nothing has been the same since he became governor, because every sector- from the Public Service to the Agricultural Sector – has received the Nasir El-Rufai “shock therapy”.
Before his coming Kaduna State,the Center of Learning lagged behind states like Katsina and Jigawa which were created in in about every area and was in dare need of a reformist in the mold of Nasir El-Rufai,whose operating motto seem to be the eternal words of Abraham Lincoln that “You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time,but you can never please all of the people all of the time” to wake up creaky Kaduna State from years of stagnation.
Nasir El-Rufai inherited a dysfunctional Kaduna State Public Service,that was largely unproductive, an aging workforce that lacked capacity to deliver,but very “focused on taking care of itself”(recurrent budget is always implemented,as opposed to capital expenditure that is hardly funded). El-Rufai has rightly argued that “No Nation develops beyond the capacity of its Public Service”.
If truly Nasir El-Rufai holds the service in disdain, it is for its perceived role in the underdevelopment of Nigeria. The Kaduna State Public Service Revitalization and Renewal Programme, aimed at improving the efficacy, capacity to resolve issues impeding public service efficiency, address low productivity rates, redundancy, duplication of roles, high proportion of aged workers, and unskilled staff was long overdue.
The Kaduna State Government in spite of all it has achieved has continued working with SPARC to develop and implement a Governance Reform Programme in three key areas; Public Financial Management (PFM); Public Service Management (PSM); and policy & Strategy (Incorporating Monitoring and Evaluation (P&S/M&E).
So far there is improved accounting, mandates of ministries, departments and agencies have become clearer, strengthened partnerships; and improved service delivery strategies. The Kaduna State might not be there yet, but the vision is clear and like the Chinese will say, the journey of a thousand miles, starts with the very first mile.
Kaduna State has left Egypt, it might like the Israelites spend 40 years to get to the desired promised land, but the fact remains that it has left Egypt in a journey that it wasn’t imposed. The various reforms are products of self assessment – the government identifying strengths and weaknesses of its public service, its policy and strategy, and taking steps to address them.
Kaduna State is one of the few states that has implemented IPSAS in the preparation and implementation of budget because the dire consequences of an insufficient transparency and accountability are obvious. It is also one of the states that has fully subscribed to the Open Government Partnership (OGP), which encourages state governments to be transparent and accountable by making information on budget available on its website. Kaduna State realization that governments are not risk free and that failure of fiscal management will have serious impact on the economy of the state especially as it relates to efficient service delivery, is something other states haven’t focused on.
The BusinessDay Governance and Competitiveness Award for ease of doing business, the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAN) Award, etc conferred on Kaduna State Government is a recognition of the tremendous work(reforms), that the governor and his team especially the budget planning commission and the finance ministry have put in and are continuing to put in. The world bank uses the ease of registering a new business, obtaining business licencing, favourable tax regime, ease of obtaining land and title documents, in concluding how friendly a state or country is doing business with them. The various awards are definitely not whimsical. For instance the ease of doing business reforms, means that the Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) will drastically shorten business registration duration.
The other critical reform project which has received the endorsement of ICAN is the Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL), a five-year Public Sector Accountability and Governance programme, funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). PERL has reformed how Kaduna State government organizes its core business of making laws, implementing, tracking and accounting for policies, plans and budgets used in delivering public goods (economic stability and an enabling environment for private enterprise so as to promote growth and reduce poverty) and service delivery to the citizenry, and how citizens themselves engage with these processes.
Governor El-Rufai is unambiguous in affirming the role of the private sector in driving the economy of the state and that “Investments by the private sector will play a crucial role in achieving the objectives its programme”. Governments can only directly employ a few persons, which means that job creation, the reduction of poverty and the boosting of human dignity and living standards are all goals that require the government to be smart in making choices, one of which is to recognise that it must partner the private sector. Against this background it must run an efficient service by cutting off waste, fraud, and abuses.
Post Script: Kudos to Kaduna State for publishing its Audited Financial Statements in a timely fashion, for publishing its Budget Implementation Performance Report,for being the first in Implementing TSA, Reviewing its Revenue Laws,and for Biometric Capture of Civil Servants etc.
