Gombe State in North eastern Nigeria has won the World Bank’s States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability, (SFTAS) award in four key categories.
The award follows the impact of the Governor Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya’s Administration on fiscal transparency and accountability in public resource management.
SFTAS is a programme that encourages and motivates Nigerian States to improve their Public Financial Management systems, processes and institution, aimed at strengthening fiscal transparency to help build trust in government, facilitate accountability in public resource management and ensure sustainability in the participating states.
The award was offered to Gombe State at a Recognition Dinner with Governor’s Award Night to celebrate the achievements of SFTAS since inception in Abuja.
At the event, Gombe State received awards of Excellent Performance on Fiscal Transparency and Accountability, Very Good performances on efficiency of Public expenditure, Domestic Revenue Mobilization and on overall SFTAS Disbursement Linked Indicators.
The state also ranked 5th in the overall rankings for SFTAS.
Receiving the awards on behalf of Governor Yahaya, the Commissioner for Finance and Economic Development, Mr. Muhammad Gambo Magaji, attributed the feat attained to the political will and determination of Governor Yahaya to reform and reposition the state’s public finance management structure to compare with international best practices.
Mr. Magaji said the Governor provided support and the freedom for the steering committee to implement policies and procedures that ensured the state met all requirements attached to the Disbursement Linked Indicators under the SFTAS programme without interference.
The Finance Commissioner also noted that Governor Yahaya enthroned a durable system that instills probity, transparency accountability, due process and the rule of law in governance.
It will be recalled that just recently, Gombe State moved four places from 11th position in 2021 to 7th in 2022, in the Transparency and Integrity Index released earlier this month by the Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Integrity Watch.
Similarly, the 2021 State-of-the-States report published by BudgIT, a leading fiscal policy tracking organisation in Nigeria, indicated that Gombe state recorded impressive improvements in its revenue generation capacity, as well as expenditure efficiency.
