BudgIT claims that FG hijacked CBN

Seun Onigbinde, the founder of BudgIT, has accused the Federal Government of taking control of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and using it to support the government’s extra-budgetary expenditures.

Onigbinde made the remark in Lagos at the BudgIT Active Citizens Award’s inaugural ceremony. He stated: “There is a big problem; the economy is not working and we are all aware of it. Growth is sluggish; in reality, leadership is absent.

This is the time Nigeria should be maximising the production of crude but we are producing far below the OPEC quota. This is the first time oil production has fallen below one million barrels per day and it is painful that we are unable to increase production.

“CBN has been hijacked and used as a funnel to provide extra-budgeting funding for the government and that has led to a significant level of inflation, this cannot continue.

“The budget is not well implemented. It could be better but we are not doing well. It is not effective. I think the fundamental issue is that we’re not planning; we just spend. The quality of our planning compared to what is being delivered is very weak.”

BudgIT – Who are they?

In order to support societal transformation, BudgIT, a civic group founded in 2011, uses technology to intersect citizen involvement with institutional development.

BudgIT, a leader in the field of social advocacy combined with technology, employs a variety of digital solutions to make budget and public spending issues simpler for citizens with the main goal of improving openness and accountability in government.

Our ongoing collaboration with civil society, government agencies, and the media is focused primarily on fiscal analysis, civic technologies, and data visualization.

With the help of BudgIT’s methodology, data may be represented artistically, enabling citizens to use the knowledge gained to demand better service delivery.

Beyond budget access, BudgIT is based on the idea that finances should serve people. The most representative is our 2014-created project tracking application, Tracka.

With BudgIT’s project officers helping citizens offline to communicate with their elected representatives and demand completion of the government projects in their neighborhoods, Tracka is now operational in 20 States and allows Nigerians to post pictures of development projects in their communities.

To date, BudgIT has been able to engage more than 4,850,000 Nigerians in online and offline discussions around public sector effectiveness and government spending.

BudgIT is now widely considered as a reliable hub for public finance data in Nigeria after receiving more than 8,000 distinct data requests from private, corporate, and development entities/individuals.

Offline and locally, BudgIT works with partners in the public and private sectors to deliver initiatives that support the capabilities of its contemporaries and cooperative governmental agencies.

We have worked with 42 civil society organizations, relying on donor money, to redesign their digital outlooks, policy analyses, and report presentation forms. We are also now testing Nigeria’s first Data Journalism platform.

We have collaborated with the National Assembly, the National Assembly Budget and Research Office, the Budget Office of the Federation, and the Kaduna State Government in the past and most recently.

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