On Sokoto’s Planned Participatory Budget

Sokoto Governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, announced last week that starting from 2016 fiscal year, the state will adopt the Participatory Budget Model where communities will decide on what projects are executed by the government. He stated this when he addressed stakeholders from his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) at a meeting in the state capital. “We will contact a cross-section of the people of the state with a view to getting their inputs into the 2016 budget. This is to ensure that any project we will execute would have been agreed upon by the people. In this direction, we will only execute projects the people of the state say they want, so as to ensure that their lives are bettered.

“We know that our communities have high level of interest in how we execute our projects, and a central part of next year’s budget process will be around creating a new opportunity for input prior to our finalising the draft budget. From the campaign periods to now, we have identified priority projects and will include them as part of the draft budget. But all communities will have the opportunity to select their preferred projects which we will then include in the final draft. However, implementation will be based on priority and availability of funds,” the Governor stated.

Participatory budgeting, according to development experts, is a process of democratic deliberation and decision-making, in which ordinary people decide how to allocate part of a municipal or public budget. Participatory budgeting allows citizens to identify, discuss, and prioritize public spending projects, and gives them the power to make real decisions about how money is spent. When this type of budgeting is taken seriously and is based on mutual trust, governments and citizen can benefit equally. In some cases it even raised people’s willingness to pay taxes. Participatory budgeting generally involves several basic steps: 1) Community members identify spending priorities and select budget delegates 2) Budget delegates develop specific spending proposals, with help from experts 3) Community members vote on which proposals to fund 4) The city or institution implements the top proposals. When given the seriousness it deserves, it often results in more equitable public spending, greater government transparency and accountability, increased levels of public participation (especially by marginalized or poorer residents), and democratic and citizenship learning. While Sokoto government should be commended for thinking differently (and rightly), this move will no doubt make the complex budget process more inclusive of residents’ voices, and more transparent as suggestions are made, considered, and acted on.

According to the World Bank, participatory budgeting has led to direct improvements in facilities in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where the model was adopted as a core public policy in the late 1980s. For example, sewer and water connections increased from 75% of households in 1988 to 98% in 1997. The number of schools has also quadrupled since 1986. The high number of participants, after more than a decade, suggests that participatory budgeting encourages increasing citizen involvement, according to the paper. Also, Porto Alegre’s health and education budget increased from 13% (1985) to almost 40% (1996), and the share of the participatory budget in the total budget increased from 17% (1992) to 21% (1999).[3] In a paper that updated the World Bank’s methodology, expanding statistical scope and analyzing Brazil’s 253 largest municipalities that use participatory budgeting, researchers found that participatory budgeting reallocates spending towards health and sanitation. Health and sanitation benefits accumulated the longer participatory budgeting was used in a municipality. Participatory budgeting does not merely allow citizens to shift funding priorities in the short-term -- it can yield sustained institutional and political change in the long term.

The World Bank then concluded that participatory budgeting can lead to improved conditions for the poor. Although it cannot overcome wider problems such as unemployment, it leads to “noticeable improvement in the accessibility and quality of various public welfare amenities”. Based on Porto Alegre more than 140 (about 2.5%) of the 5,571 municipalities in Brazil have adopted participatory budgeting.

In Nigeria, we have seen how every year, governments at various levels reel out fiscal policies which at the end of the day, the impact hardly trickles down to the mass populace. By adopting a new model, Tambuwal and his team have appreciated the need to act differently. This approach can help governments be more accountable and responsive, and can also improve the public’s perception of governmental performance and the value the public receives from the government. Citizens are diverse. Not only do citizen viewpoints differ from those of government insiders, but from citizen to citizen. No single citizen or group of citizens is able to represent the views of all citizens. So the best way to assure a broad perspective is to collect information in a variety of ways and from a variety of sources.

First, the government can gather community input throughout the year through surveys, citizen committees, or other methods and use that information to determine community needs during budget preparation or hold town or neighbourhood-based meetings specifically to solicit citizen input. Here you will have formal presentation from citizen groups or committees. All of the budget meetings should be open to the public. The idea here is to value the people’s ideas and their concerns and importantly, ensure the budget process continues to address the issues of quality of life of the populace.

While as a starting point the process of consultation should be gradual, the long-term goal of government should be to use its expertise and assistance to help ordinary people build capacity so that they can do what is needed on their own. When the community is empowered to make decisions, that is when gardens grow, students mature productively, and residents and land develop in ways that make sense to the greatest number. When residents have the opportunity to get together and agree upon important decisions, the resulting changes are wiser and more enduring. With everyone weighing in, we can build healthier, more vibrant, and more economically diverse and economically sound communities.

- Editor’s Note: Imam Imam is Special Adviser Media to Sokoto State governor