A damning new report by civic-tech organisation BudgIT has exposed a major transparency gap in Nigeria’s third tier of government, revealing that only 10 out of 36 states make their Local Government Area (LGA) annual budgets publicly accessible online.
Titled “The Missing Tier: Mapping Local Government Budget Transparency in Nigeria,” the study found that just six states provide partial budget data, while a staggering 18 states, including Abia, publish no LGA budget information whatsoever on any official platform.
BudgIT highlighted that although local government budgets are prepared and supposedly maintained at council secretariats nationwide, the vast majority remain completely inaccessible to citizens, journalists, civil society groups, and even researchers seeking online access.
“For most of Nigeria’s 774 local governments, those budgets are not publicly accessible online,” the report bluntly stated.
Ekiti State emerged as the clear leader in LGA budget transparency, followed by Ebonyi, Osun, Kebbi, Kogi, Enugu, Kaduna, and Yobe. These eight states, plus two others providing partial disclosure, form the small group of relatively open performers.
Even among the better-performing states, BudgIT noted serious shortcomings: many fail to upload current-year budgets, while several published documents are incomplete, poorly formatted, or difficult to navigate.
The absence of online LGA budget disclosure, according to BudgIT, undermines public accountability, citizen participation, and effective oversight of how trillions of naira allocated to the 774 local governments are actually spent.
