The United States government has called on Nigeria to strengthen its public procurement process and publish accessible information on government contracts, citing persistent gaps in fiscal transparency in its 2026 Fiscal Transparency Report released this week.
The US Department of State report assessed 139 governments and found that Nigeria was among 67 that failed to meet minimum fiscal transparency requirements, making no significant progress in addressing deficiencies identified during the review period. While Nigeria made its enacted budget and end-of-year report widely and easily accessible online, it did not publish its executive budget proposal within a reasonable period, and budget documents did not provide a substantially complete picture of revenues and expenditures or break down spending to support executive offices.
The report noted that actual revenues and expenditures did not reasonably correspond to those in the enacted budget, and that the supreme audit institution did not meet international standards of independence or publish substantive audit reports, although it had access to the entire executed budget. It also found that Nigeria did not publish accessible information on public procurement contracts, limiting citizens’ ability to monitor how public contracts are awarded and implemented.
To improve fiscal transparency, the US urged Nigeria to: make its executive budget proposal widely and easily accessible online; provide a substantially complete picture of revenues and expenditures in the budget; break down expenditures to support executive offices; ensure actual revenues and expenditures reasonably correspond to the enacted budget; ensure the supreme audit institution meets international standards of independence and publishes audit reports; and publish accessible information on public procurement contracts.
The report acknowledged some positives, including that Nigeria made information on debt obligations, including major state-owned enterprise debt, publicly available, and that it specified in law the criteria and procedures for awarding natural resource extraction contracts and licences and followed existing regulations in practice. The sovereign wealth fund was assessed as having a sound legal framework and disclosing its source of funding and general approach to withdrawals.