Fiscal Transparency Under Scrutiny As Akwa Ibom’s Q2 Report Omits Spending Details
By ARIT OTONG UBOK
AKWA Ibom State has published its second-quarter 2026 Budget Implementation Report, but the document has come under scrutiny over the limited information it provides about how public funds were received and spent.
The BudgIT Foundation, a civic organisation that tracks public finance and government accountability, said the three-page report contains significant data gaps that prevent citizens from effectively scrutinising the state’s finances.
The development has placed Akwa Ibom at the centre of a wider national conversation about whether state governments should be judged merely by their willingness to publish fiscal reports or also by the quality and completeness of the information contained in them.
Publication Without Full Disclosure
In its Half-Year BIR Status and Comparative Insights 2026/2025, BudgIT acknowledged that Akwa Ibom was among the states that published Q2 2026 Budget Implementation Reports.
However, the organisation said publication alone should not be equated with transparency when important financial information is absent.
“Publishing a BIR is not enough, but the data must be complete and usable,” BudgIT said.
According to the organisation, Akwa Ibom’s Q2 report does not provide sufficient information to enable citizens to determine where the state’s public funds were allocated.
The distinction is significant. A budget implementation report is intended to provide a picture of how government revenue and approved expenditure are being translated into actual spending. When crucial details are missing, citizens, journalists, civil society organisations and other stakeholders may struggle to independently assess the government’s fiscal performance.
Questions Over ₦2.9 Trillion in Revenue
The concerns assume greater significance against the volume of revenue that has accrued to the state under Governor Umo Eno.
According to revenue data cited in the report, the Eno administration received more than ₦2.943 trillion over 38 months.
Yet, BudgIT’s criticism suggests that publicly available fiscal documents do not contain enough detail for citizens to establish how the funds were deployed across government programmes and projects.
The information gap also raises broader questions about the ability of the public to independently verify whether all revenue streams due to the state are properly captured and remitted into government accounts.
BudgIT said it formally communicated its concerns to the Akwa Ibom Government but received no response.
The organisation therefore maintained that genuine transparency requires more than making a document available online.
“Transparency requires disclosure—not just publication,” it said.
From Detailed Reports to Brief Summaries
The latest concerns also form part of a longer pattern in Akwa Ibom’s fiscal reporting.
According to the report, the state stopped publishing detailed Budget Implementation Reports from the first quarter of 2025.
The detailed reports were replaced with a shorter three-page summary. By the second quarter of 2026, the summary had expanded to five pages, but BudgIT maintained that important information remained unavailable.
The change has raised concerns because the length of a fiscal report is less important than whether it contains sufficient information to allow independent assessment of revenue and expenditure.
A longer summary can still leave major questions unanswered if it does not disclose the underlying figures and expenditure details required for meaningful scrutiny.
Audited Accounts Do Not Fully Close the Gap
The issue became more pronounced after Governor Eno was asked during a live interview about how the state’s accumulated revenue had been spent.
The governor reportedly referred to the state’s audited financial statements as a source containing more comprehensive information.
However, those statements have also been criticised for failing to provide adequate details of capital expenditure.
That means the alternative source cited by the governor does not necessarily resolve all the information gaps identified in the Budget Implementation Reports.
The resulting situation leaves citizens with several important questions: how much revenue has actually accrued, how much has been spent, what projects received funding, how much was spent on them and whether the expenditure corresponds with approved budgetary allocations.
National Picture Reveals Another Layer
Akwa Ibom’s situation emerged from BudgIT’s broader assessment of fiscal reporting across Nigeria.
The organisation found that 34 of the country’s 36 states had published their Q2 2026 Budget Implementation Reports, representing a compliance rate of 94.4 per cent.
Osun and Rivers were the two states without Q2 2026 reports available.
The national compliance rate was slightly lower than the 97.2 per cent recorded in Q2 2025, when 35 states had published their reports.
BudgIT described the year-on-year decline as a setback for fiscal transparency.
Rivers remained non-compliant in both periods, while Osun joined the list of states without an available Q2 report in 2026.
The Bigger Transparency Question
The Akwa Ibom case demonstrates that fiscal transparency has two separate dimensions.
The first is disclosure: whether a government publishes the required financial information.
The second is usability: whether the information published is sufficiently detailed, clear and comprehensive for citizens to follow public money.
Akwa Ibom has met the first test by publishing its Q2 report. BudgIT’s criticism is that it has not adequately met the second.
That distinction matters because public accountability cannot depend solely on citizens trusting official assurances. Effective scrutiny requires accessible data that allows independent verification of government revenue, expenditure and project implementation.
For a state that has received trillions of naira in public revenue, the demand for detailed fiscal information is consequently more than an administrative requirement. It is central to determining whether citizens can meaningfully follow the money.
As BudgIT’s latest assessment indicates, the challenge for Akwa Ibom is no longer simply whether it publishes a Budget Implementation Report. The more consequential question is whether the report tells citizens enough to understand where their money has gone.
