The Chief Executive Officer of BudgiT, Seun Onigbinde, has urged states to desist from acquiring more foreign debts saying the burden of paying back in foreign currency would impact their revenues.
Onigbinde also called for a review of the constitution to allow for transparency on the parts of state governments to make public the details of their budget and the implementation.
Speaking at the maiden edition of the ‘Meet The Executive’ organised by the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria (FICAN) in Lagos on Tuesday, he said this transparency would enable citizens to hold the government accountable.
On foreign debts of states, he said states do not have the luxury of earning foreign exchange to pay off their foreign borrowings and they remain at the mercy of the exchange rate variations.
Citing the Lagos- Badagry expressway project as an example Onigbinde said, “When you assume something was packaged by private people and World Bank was involved, you would assume that standard ethics would have followed.”
BudgiT had recently challenged some state governments for not making available their budget for 2017.
While noting that the state governments are not bound by law to make public their spending books, Onigbinde said it such law should be formulated.
“There is no law that says the state government has to give out its budget. So, what we need is continuous advocacy. At the next constitutional review, we should put forward the issue of transparency, and why state governments should publish their budgets. We need to build up a moral issue around it,” he stated.