The International Budget Partnership (IBP) Nigeria is set to scrutinise Nigeria’s budget implementation, focusing on whether approved funds translate into services for citizens.
The Country Director of IBP Nigeria, Olayinka Babalola, stated this at a news conference on Wednesday in Abuja ahead of the organisation’s PULSE Summit 2026 scheduled for Sept. 3.
Babalola said the PULSE Summit, with the theme “From Approved Budgets to the Last Mile: Examining Budget Implementation in Nigeria,” would connect budget data with citizens’ experiences.
She said PULSE, meaning Public Finance: Unlocking Last Mile Services, would examine the gap between budget allocations and the services ultimately delivered to Nigerians.
“Every year, the conversation around Nigeria’s budget is loud and familiar. We discuss its size, allocations for health and education, and revenue projections.
“But what citizens experience every day is the last mile: whether medicines are available, teachers are in classrooms, and water flows from their taps,” she said.
According to her, the last mile is where Nigeria’s budget system often breaks down, preventing public funds from reaching the people they were intended to serve.
Babalola said the summit would particularly focus on marginalised groups, including women and girls, while identifying points where the budget implementation process fails.
“When we disaggregate the process, we can identify where it is breaking. Once we know where it is breaking, it becomes easier to fix,” she said.
She said the summit would not be a one-off event, noting that its outcomes and commitments would directly inform the organisation’s agenda for the following year.
Onyekachi Chukwu, Strategy and Policy Lead at IBP Nigeria, said budget implementation challenges could arise from poor planning, delayed releases, procurement delays, weak oversight or several factors combined.
“The problem is not always that there is no budget. If we do not know where the problem occurred, we cannot find the right solution,” Chukwu said.
He said PULSE would bring together three critical elements: fiscal evidence, citizen and frontline experiences, and trackable commitments to address identified implementation bottlenecks.
According to him, fiscal evidence would examine what was budgeted, what was released and what was actually spent by government.
He said citizen and frontline experiences would determine whether services promised through the budget were available where they were most needed.
Chukwu said stakeholders would identify bottlenecks, determine who could address them and agree on realistic changes that could improve service delivery.
Chika Okoh, Senior Programme Coordinator at IBP Nigeria, said IBP data had already identified budget releases as a major gap within Nigeria’s budget implementation chain.
He emphasised the critical roles of the media and communities in monitoring budget implementation and ensuring that public funds produce measurable results.
“A budget announcement is a story, but what happens after that announcement is the main story,” he said.
He said monitoring should establish whether funds were released, whether releases were timely, how funds were used, what was delivered and who was responsible.
IBP Nigeria is a non-governmental organisation working to promote government budgets that are more transparent, participatory, equitable and accountable.
