BudgIT Nigeria discovers N278b and N51b payments into personal accounts on Open Treasury Portal

Nigeria’s civic tech organisation, BudgIT Nigeria, has discovered “over 5000 payments without descriptions to the tune of N278 billion and over 2,900 payment records totaling N51 billion paid into personal accounts with vague descriptions, among other huge discrepancies on the Open Treasury Portal.”

The Open Treasury Portal: http://opentreasury.gov.ng was launched by the Nigerian government last year to allow citizens scrutinize government’s daily spending.

The portal allows all citizens to view financial reports and statements of expenditures across all government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

During the official unveiling of the portal, President Muhammadu Buhari had directed the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) to make public, on daily basis, how monies that come into government coffer are being spent.

All government MDAs are statutorily mandated to publish, on a daily basis, reports of payments in excess of N5m and over, monthly budget performance and sundry other official financial dealings.

BudgIT published its findings via its Twitter handle and has elicited a lot of reactions. One of the many red flags was “a whooping 2.04 billion naira payment into personal account with no description,” noted one tweet.

BudgIT in an official statement said the “Open Treasury while a laudable step has been marred by payments to personal accounts, lack of payment descriptions and missing beneficiary information, among others.”