Jigawa, Kaduna, Bauchi top ICAN’s Accountability Indexes report

Jigawa, Kaduna and Bauchi states have been ranked highest in the Public Finance Management (PFM) report of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria’s Accountability Indexes (ICANAI) 2021.

The report, which was released in Lagos also ranked Rivers, Sokoto and Oyo as the lowest, occupying the 37th, 36th and 35th positions respectively.

The summary of the ranking for the 2021 ICAN-AI report placed Jigawa (75.1%), Kaduna (74.7%), Bauchi (74.3%), Edo (73.5%) and Niger (64.9%) in the top five.

Osun, Kogi, Gombe, Enugu and Kwara with a score of 59.2%, 57.6%, 54.7%, 53.5% and 53.1%, respectively completed the top 10 list.

Lagos (32.2%), Nasarawa (28.2%), Kano (27.8%), Ogun (27.8%), Bayelsa (27.3%), Zamfara (24.9%), Imo (24.9%), Oyo (24.5%), Sokoto (23.7%) and Rivers (20.4%) were the least ranked.

The president of the institute, Tijani Musa Isa, said the ICAN-AI framework consisted of five pillars, 25 indicators and 70 dimensions aimed at promoting high quality public finance management’s system in Nigeria.

He listed the five pillars as budget credibility, policy-based fiscal strategy and budgeting, external audit and legislative scrutiny, management of assets and debts as well as control in budget execution, accounting and reporting.

Isa, who noted that the first two editions of the report, covering 2017 and 2018 fiscal years, revealed major gaps in Nigeria’s PFM system, especially low level of publicly available information on the fiscal activities of the three tiers of government, said the 2020 and 2021 reports revealed a significant improvement in the percentage of information made available during assessment exercises.

Meanwhile, the institute has also inducted 2014 members as Associate Chartered Accountants bringing its total membership to 60,175.

Isa urged the inductees to maintain high standards of professionalism as wrong, false or mishandled financial information can spell disaster for the economy.