By; JACOB ONJEWU DICKSON
Gombe State, under the dynamic leadership of Governor Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya has won the World Bank’s States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability, and Sustainability ( SFTAS) Award in four key categories owing to reforms that have impacted positively on its fiscal transparency and accountability in public resource management.
This was contained in a statement signed by the Director-General (Press Affairs) Government House Gombe, Ismaila Uba Misilli, dated Wednesday November 16, 2022.
SFTAS is a programme that encourages and motivates Nigerian States towards improvement of their PFM systems, processes and institution aimed at strengthening fiscal transparency to help build trust in government, facilitate accountability in public resource management and ensuring sustainability in the participating states.
An event, tagged “Federal Government of Nigeria/World Bank States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) recognition Dinner with Governors/Award Night” was organised to celebrate the acievements of SFTAS since inception.
The event took place at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja on Monday, 14th November, 2022.
During the occasion, Gombe State received awards of Excellent Performance on Fiscal Transparency and Accountability, Very Good performances on efficiency of Public expenditure, Domestic Revenue Mobilization and on overall SFTAS Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLI’s). Gombe is also ranked 5th in the overall rankings for SFTAS.
The Commissioner for Finance and Economic Development, Muhammad Gambo Magaji who received the awards on behalf of Governor Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya attributed the feat attained by Gombe State to the political will and determination of Governor Inuwa Yahaya to reform and reposition the state’s public finance management structure to compare with international best practices.
He said the Governor provided support and the freedom for the steering committee to implement policies and procedures that ensured the state met all requirements attached to the Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLI’s) under the SFTAS programme without interference.
The Finance Commissioner noted that Governor Inuwa has enthroned a durable system that instills probity, transparency accountability, due process and the rule of law in governance.
It will be recalled that just recently, Gombe State moved four places, from 11th position in 2021 to 7th in 2022, in the Transparency and Integrity Index released earlier this month by the Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Integrity Watch (CeFTIW).
Also, the 2021 State-of-the-states report published by BudgIT, a leading fiscal policy tracking organisation in Nigeria, indicated that Gombe state recorded impressive improvements in its revenue generation capacity as well as expenditure efficiency under the leadership of Governor Inuwa Yahaya.
