When Umo Eno, as a governorship candidate, crisscrossed Akwa Ibom State, soliciting for votes, he vowed to entrench transparency if elected. At town halls, campaign events, and meetings with professional groups, he repeatedly spoke about accountability, openness, and responsible governance. In his manifesto, the ARISE Agenda, he pledged to “promote accountability and transparency by ensuring compliance with Fiscal Responsibility and Public Procurement Acts.”
However, more than two years into his administration, a detailed review of budget documents, official timelines, legal provisions, civil society reports, and responses from government officials reveals a widening gap between that promise and practice.
Instead of deepening fiscal openness, evidence suggests that Governor Eno is adopting government secrecy, repeatedly breaching Akwa Ibom’s fiscal responsibility law, and dismantling reforms that once made the state a reference point for subnational transparency in Nigeria.
What the law demands
Akwa Ibom’s fiscal responsibility law, codified as Volume III, Cap 56 of the Laws of Akwa Ibom State 2022, is clear on what the government should do to be fiscally transparent. Section 47(1) mandates the state to conduct its fiscal and financial affairs “in a transparent manner” and to ensure “full and timely disclosure and wide publication of all transactions and decisions involving public revenues and expenditure and their implications for the economy.”
Section 47(2) requires all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), including local governments, to maintain functional online portals for publishing critical fiscal documents. These include proposed and approved budgets, budget implementation reports, individual MDA performance reports, and audited financial statements. The state’s own Standard Budget Calendar complements this by setting clear deadlines for making each document public.
Eno inherited foundation of fiscal openness
Governor Eno did not inherit a blank slate on fiscal openness. His predecessor, Udom Emmanuel, had come under pressure following the 2018 World Bank-supported State Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) assessment, which ranked Akwa Ibom among 11 states that performed poorly on fiscal transparency.
Rather than resist scrutiny, Mr Emmanuel’s administration embraced reforms. The state made fiscal laws that institutionalised fiscal responsibility and began publishing proposed budgets before legislative approval to allow public input, approved and supplementary budgets, detailed quarterly Budget Implementation Reports (BPRs), debt management reports, audited financial statements and citizens’ budgets. These efforts paid off. By 2020, Akwa Ibom ranked first in the South-South region and fifth nationally on the Budget Transparency Index. In 2022, Akwa Ibom State advanced to the top of the country’s fiscal transparency rankings.
Aware of these strides, Mr Eno, in the opening words of the ARISE Agenda, promised continuity. “I believe in building upon the legacies of past administrations for faster and sustained development,” he declared.
Promising start, then a turn
The early months of the Eno administration appeared to align with that pledge. In September 2023, barely four months in office, the governor presented a supplementary budget, which was passed into law and published on the state government budget website.
However, the gesture did not last.
In November 2023, Policy Alert, a civil society organisation focused on fiscal justice, reviewed the supplementary budget and raised red flags.
The group reported that five projects already completed and inaugurated by the previous administration were reallocated multi-billion naira in the new budget. It also criticised what it described as disproportionate votes on furniture for lawmakers and the approval for the purchase of 180 SUVs and pickup trucks, despite generous allocations for similar items in the original budget.
Mr Eno dismissed the concerns as “frivolous.”
“This government will not be responding to frivolous allegations. I won’t be distracted,” he said, adding that Akwa Ibom people would judge his administration at the end of its tenure.
Behind the scenes, however, multiple sources in the ministries of Finance and Budget and Economic Planning told PREMIUM TIMES that the scrutiny triggered a decisive shift.
According to them, the governor directed that proposed budgets should no longer be published until after legislative approval, effectively shutting out civil society and the media from questioning budget priorities before they become law.
Architecture of secrecy
The effects of that alleged directive are now visible. Unlike previous years when proposed budgets were uploaded immediately after presentation to the Akwa Ibom House of Assembly, the 2024 proposed budget was not published until late January, weeks after it had already been passed into law. The same pattern was repeated with the 2024 supplementary budget, the 2025 proposed budget and the 2025 proposed supplementary budget. None of these documents can be found on the state’s official budget portal.
The 2025 Approved Supplementary Budget signed by Mr Eno on 8 October 2025 was only published 12 days before the end of the fiscal year, on 19 December 2025, a day after PREMIUM TIMES’ enquiry about the absence of the document.
In contrast, checks show that between 2020 and 2022, when fiscal reforms gained traction, such documents were available online and before approvals.
Even more worrisome, the 2026 proposed budget was published in mid-January 2026, after legislative engagement that culminated in the budget’s approval had ended in 2025.
Without access to the document, citizens were excluded from providing informed input, a concern publicly raised by Policy Alert and the Akwa Ibom State Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress during a public hearing on the budget, organised by the Akwa Ibom assembly.
Using the 2024 citizens’ budget to test the waters
One of the flagship reforms under SFTAS was the Citizens’ Budget, a simplified version of the budget meant to help ordinary people understand how public funds are raised and spent.
Akwa Ibom’s Standard Budget Calendar requires it to be published at least by March each year. Under Governor Eno, compliance faltered.
Instead of a comprehensive document like the 61-page 2023 Citizens’ Budget published by the previous administration, Mr Eno’s administration released a single-page document titled “2024 Citizens’ Budget.” The document omitted basic explanations expected of a publication of this kind. Worse still, it missed the 31 March deadline. Analysis using the Wayback Machine shows it was uploaded on 14 May 2024, 44 days late.
Despite a 29 May 2024 report by TheMail, a newspaper in Akwa Ibom, drawing attention to the breach, the government never released a complete version. While a more comprehensive Citizens’ Budget was published in 2025, the 2024 episode raised concerns.
Breaking the law, standard on budget timelines
The fiscal responsibility law also governs when budgets should be presented. Section 21 stipulates that the State Executive Council must approve and submit the proposed annual budget to the House of Assembly not later than the end of October, allowing at least two months for scrutiny and public engagement.
Mr Eno has never complied with this provision for the three times he has presented a budget to the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly. The 2024 budget was presented on 21 November 2023; the 2025 budget on 26 November 2024; and the 2026 appropriation bill on 25 November 2025.
By comparison, from 2019 to 2022, the Akwa Ibom State Government largely adhered to the deadline, missing it only once by seven days in 2023. An analysis of the 2020 through 2023 proposed budget presentations shows that the 2020 appropriation bill was presented on 8 October 2019, the 2021 appropriation bill on 20 October 2020, the 2022 appropriation bill on 25 October 2021, and the 2023 appropriation bill on 7 November 2022.
Arbitrariness appears to have become ingrained in almost the entire budget process.
The Standard Budget Calendar of Akwa Ibom State stipulates that December is the deadline for the state assembly to review, pass, and present the following year’s budget for the governor’s assent. The calendar also keeps December as the end date for the governor to assent to the budget passed by the assembly.
Despite this being adhered to in past years, the 2026 budget has been different, with the calendar disregarded.
The Akwa Ibom House of Assembly passed the budget into law on 1 January 2026, while Governor Eno assented to it on 5 January 2026.
Contrary to the Budget Calendar, which sets December as the deadline for publishing the approved budget online, the 2026 approved budget has yet to be published as of mid-January 2026, when PREMIUM TIMES checked the state government’s websites.
Other fiscal documents not published
Beyond the proposed and supplementary budgets, other fiscal documents have disappeared from the Akwa Ibom State Government’s web portals.
For instance, the Domestic Debts report of the state, a quarterly report that details the amount of money the state owes to its lenders, lists the last publication quarter as the Second Quarter of 2023, which falls within the administration of Mr Eno’s predecessor, Mr Emmanuel.
Another fiscal document that is no longer published on the government web portal is the Akwa Ibom State Fiscal Responsibility Board Annual Report. This report usually presents the year’s State Public Finance Management (PFM) assessment findings, which assessed the State’s PFM regulatory framework, institutions, processes, systems and capabilities under 64 indicators structured under seven pillars – budgeting, planning, administration and execution, budget transparency, public procurement, internal audit and financial reporting, domestic resource mobilisation, auditing and debt management.
The last publication of this report was in 2023. The 2024 Report of the Auditor General for Local Governments on the accounts of the 31 local governments of Akwa Ibom State has not been published on the government’s web portal.
Budget performance reports: transparency shoved
Quarterly Budget Performance Reports (BPRs) are central to fiscal accountability. They allow citizens to track revenue and spending across sectors and highlight what they consider to be deviations. Mr Eno’s administration continued publishing detailed BPRs until 2025.
Now, instead of the comprehensive reports previously issued, which sometimes exceeded 46 pages and broke down revenue and expenditure by administrative, economic, functional, and programme classifications, the government began publishing three-page summaries that merely aggregate figures for Q1, Q2, and Q3 of 2025.
The implications are profound. Without disaggregated data, citizens cannot see how much each ministry generates internally, how revenues flow from sources such as statutory allocation, VAT, derivation funds or taxes, or how spending priorities tilt between social sectors like health and education and administrative centres of power.
When questioned at a press briefing, the Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, Linus Nkan, defended the abridged reports. “We publish what is important and leave out what is not,” he said. “For me, that information is enough.”
He added, “That you paid Mr A and failed to pay Mr B, for me, that information is not important. In the course of the year, there may be little posting errors, and at the end of the year, the auditors will do their work, where there was wrong classification, posting or coding, that will be corrected.
“At the end of the year, after our account has been audited by the Auditor General of the State and approved by the House of Assembly, the full publication will be made public. But for this report, we see that it is adequate.”
Findings by PREMIUM TIMES also revealed that the 2023 and 2024 Audited Financial Statements of Akwa Ibom State published under Mr Eno’s administration do not include capital expenditures, such as expenditures on projects and programmes.
However, this pattern can be traced to Mr Emmanuel’s administration. The Audited Financial Statements published on the state government budget websites do not contain those details.
Civil society pushback
On 29 July 2025, a coalition of 21 civil society organisations, including Policy Alert, Peace Point Development Foundation, Clement Isong Foundation and STEPS, issued a joint statement warning that Akwa Ibom’s opaque reporting constituted a clear breach of the state’s fiscal responsibility law.
They called on the government to withdraw the Q2 2025 BPR and publish a comprehensive version, release historical reports with omitted details, and fully comply with transparency and procurement laws.
National data backs their concern. Analysis of BPRs across Nigeria shows that Akwa Ibom is the only state with an approved 2025 budget that failed to publish detailed BPRs for three consecutive quarters. Every other state has reports of at least 12 pages. Rivers State is the sole exception, but it currently has no approved budget due to a political crisis.
Analysis of the BPRs of the states in Nigeria are highlighted as following: Abia -66 pages, Adamawa 77 pages, Anambra -112 pages, Bauchi– 96 pages, Bayelsa– 56 pages, Benue– 66 pages, Borno– 64 pages, Cross River– 121 pages, Delta-156 pages, Ebonyi State- 67 pages, Edo– 65 pages, Ekiti-108 pages, Enugu-63 pages, Gombe– 77 pages, Imo-57 pages, Jigawa-89 Pages, Kaduna-54 pages, Kano-55 pages, Katsina– 56 pages, Kebbi– 110 pages, Kogi-83 Pages, Kwara– 59 pages, Lagos-73 pages, Nasarawa– 77 pages, Niger-63 pages, Ogun-12 pages, Ondo -88 pages, Osun- 87 pages, Oyo 56 Pages, Plateau-105 pages, Sokoto-84 pages, Taraba– 85 pages, Yobe-62 pages, Zamfara- 66 pages.
Some states, such as Bauchi, Cross River, Delta, Ekiti, Kebbi, Lagos, Ondo, Plateau, and Sokoto, have gone further to provide detailed reports on capital expenditures for all projects and programmes across the MDAs.
FOI requests ignored
Beyond proactive disclosure, the law guarantees the right to request information.
On 1 December 2025, this reporter submitted Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the Commissioners for Finance and for Budget and Economic Planning in Akwa Ibom, seeking the 2025 revised budget, proposed supplementary budget and detailed BPRs. The requests were acknowledged, but none were granted.
The fiscal responsibility law says failure to respond to a request such as this is an offence. Specifically, section 51 of the law states, “Any person who refuses to give information to another upon a request made in the performance of a function imposed by this Law commits an offence and shall on conviction be liable to a term of confinement of not less than three months or a fine of not less than one hundred thousand naira or to both.”
When contacted, the Commissioner for Finance, Emem Bob, directed our reporter to the budget ministry, despite his ministry’s mandate explicitly including transparency and accountability in public expenditure.
“Recently, everything concerning the budget has been moved to the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning. So, contact the commissioner. He has a full team that will provide fiscal updates,” Mr Bob told our reporter.
When reminded that his ministry oversees finance-related matters, he responded that journalists who needed “anything” from him must submit a written request.
This reporter reminded Mr Bob of an FOI request sent to his office on 1 December 2025. He said he would request it from his office staff and that he would respond accordingly. Despite the assurance, the commissioner did not respond to the FO1 request at the time this report was filed.
The budget commissioner, Mr Nkan, meanwhile, rebuffed our reporter on the matter. “Find out who you should make the enquiries to,” he said to our reporter on the phone before ending the call abruptly. He did not respond to further calls.
Weak oversight, mounting risks
Akwa Ibom has had a revenue windfall in the last two years. Yet many residents have questioned where the money has gone, when compared with the development projects in the state.
Financial records in the last two years show that the state has received about double what the past administration received in the past four years, between 2019 and 2022. Yet Mr Eno’s administration arguably has little to show for it.
Analysis of the State Audited Financial Statements and its Budget Performance Report shows that between July 2023 and September 2025, Mr Eno’s administration received N2.227 trillion (July to December 2023 – N240.46billion), (2024 – N1.09trillion, January -September 2025 – N897.14billion minus opening balance). Comparatively, former Governor Emmanuel, in his second term, received a total of N1.18 trillion. (N192.06bn in 2019, N203.55bn in 2020, N340.36bn in 2021 and N444.29bn in 2024).
Regulators Speak
The state’s Fiscal Responsibility Board was established to enforce compliance with fiscal transparency. Its Director General, Victor Edet, said he was unaware that the 2024 board’s annual report was not published online. He, however, argued that the law does not specify how detailed BPRs should be. He expressed hope that the gaps would be corrected following legislative intervention.
The Akwa Ibom House of Assembly has promised to investigate gaps in the BPRs. The Chairperson of the House Committee on Appropriation and Finance, Itoro Etim, said the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning had submitted comprehensive Budget Performance Reports for appraisal. However, she said the committee would check again what had been published and, if found incomplete, would engage with the relevant authorities to publish them immediately.
On what the assembly has done to curb the new practice of the Akwa Ibom State Government not publishing the proposed budget and supplementary budgets, Ms Etim said the committee would investigate and get back to the reporter.
Decline in transparency will erode accountability – Expert
BudgIT Foundation, a civil society organisation that facilitates budget reforms at the national and sub-national levels in West Africa, says the decline in fiscal transparency in Mr Eno’s administration points to a growing sense of impunity, and that it will lead to a complete absence of accountability in the management of resources in Akwa Ibom.
Speaking through its Deputy Country Director, Vahyala Kwaga, BudgIT said the administration can only do what it puts out. Hence, its refusal to publish timely, regular and comprehensive fiscal documents suggests that the administration is not ready to be accountable.
“The clear departure from fiscal transparency potentiates institutionalisation of opacity from the regular and comprehensive reporting. Comprehensiveness, regularity and availability are the bare minimum of any government,” he said.
Mr Kwaga noted that, beyond accountability, the government’s failure to be transparent in its fiscal affairs will affect investment in the state.
“This has negative implications for investment. Investors who want to invest in Akwa Ibom will now think twice. They will wonder if the government is secretive with its revenue and expenditures. That is the same way it will be secretive when their money is invested. Despite some gains the state may have recorded now, that could be doubled or tripled if the state is open regarding its finances.”
He called on the Akwa Ibom Assembly to be proactive on the matter, as civil society groups are.
“The Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly should do the same. It is actually their responsibility. That is why they exist. They are meant to serve as a check on the Executive. Unfortunately, far too often in Nigeria, the state assembly is an appendage of the executive.”
Akwa Ibom yet to join Open Government Partnership
Despite its claims to be an open state, the Akwa Ibom State Government is among the nine states in Nigeria that have yet to join the Open Government Partnership (OGP).
So far, 27 states and five local government areas (AMAC in FCT, Gwagwalada in FCT, Kwali in FCT, Anambra East in Anambra State, and Abaji in FCT) have joined.
The OGP, joined by Nigeria in 2016, is a voluntary multilateral, multi-stakeholder initiative that seeks to foster collaboration between government and civil society. It aims to create and implement reforms to improve public service delivery and, more broadly, governance through transparency, accountability, and civic participation and inclusion.
Akwa Ibom opacity on fiscal documents exposes broader pattern
On 31 July 2025, the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development launched the 2024 Openness Index Report, which named Akwa Ibom among 16 states in Nigeria that suppress administrative transparency and access to information.
The report said that Akwa Ibom is among the states yet to domesticate the FOI Act or create similar mechanisms that serve to promote transparency and accountability in government.
The index, which drew responses from over 1,100 professionals, including journalists, editors, newsroom managers, and civil society actors, categorised Akwa Ibom among states that do not proactively publish budgets, contracts, or policy documents.
The report said these states often ignore or delay FOI requests, and that public information offices are under‑resourced or politicised.
“This lack of transparency limits citizens’ ability to engage meaningfully with governance, and it erodes trust,” the report stated.
The Openness Index also examined seven diagnostic factors that, together, paint a comprehensive picture of openness: legal protections, institutional guarantees, journalist safety, media diversity, internet freedom, civic engagement, and government transparency.
The report shows that Akwa Ibom ranked 12th least open state in Nigeria, with a score of 47.81, below the national average of 50.51 per cent. States like Cross River, Ondo, Delta, Katsina, and Ekiti emerged as the five most open states in Nigeria.
