Ijeoma Echeruo, a former Special Adviser on Budget Policy to Imo state government, works as a consultant on public finance and budget reform. In this interview with ENE OSHABA she speaks on Nigeria budget system, even as she makes case for gender budgeting.
What is your background and what attracted you to public finance and budget reform?
My professional career has been in the area of finance and economics. I have an undergraduate degree in Economics from Syracuse University and postgraduate degree in International Public Policy from Johns Hopkins School of International Studies.
I returned to Nigeria to work as a Special Adviser on Budget Policy in Imo state. I am currently working as a consultant on public finance and budget reform.
As an expert in budget, finance matters, how would you access Nigeria’s budget system?
We still have a long way to go. A lot of work has been done with support from multilateral development partners.
Unfortunately there is a lack of understanding of the ways in which the budget, policy and development outcomes are connected.
There is a fundamental unwillingness at both the state and federal levels to respect or appreciate the powers of the budget process and document.
You spoke on gender budgeting at a recent workshop for legislators; can you throw more light on it?
My presentation focused on making the case for the acknowledgement and promotion of women’s participation in the economic landscape.
Some of the numbers I shared made the point that in 2014, with the re-basing of our GDP, Nigeria became the biggest economy in Africa, overtaking South Africa.
The re-basing included the inclusion of previously overlooked sectors of the economy, especially the service industry, and contributed 50 per cent to 60 per cent of the revised GDP.
As we all know, the informal economy is largely driven by women, and is often referred to as the feminine economy. Gender budgeting, when done properly will create more opportunities to formalise the participation of women in the economy, and strengthen their ability to contribute to Nigeria’s growth.
What exactly is gender responsive budgeting?
On a deeper and broader level, gender responsive or gender sensitive budgeting is all about creating equality amongst the sexes when it comes to the manner in which government collect revenue and make expenditures.
You may find that most taxes, and other types of fees and tolls that government collects, come from women, especially those in the service industry and so on.
On the other hand, you then find that most of that revenue is spent on activities such as business loans, which many women are unable to access. So, it is this fundamental problem of inefficiency and unfairness that drives gender budgeting.
The concept of ensuring that the processes of governance are considerate of gender is referred to as gender mainstreaming, and it is a powerful tool for ensuring that benefits of development reaches women as much as men.
It is not all about creating a special or separate budget for women rather it is a purposeful process for keeping a gender perspective in policy/programme formulation, its implementation, and review.
At its most fundamental level, gender budgeting is driven by the logic that a well designed plan is best suited to succeed. When a budget document or process is oblivious to the needs of a large percentage of society, it is unlikely to lead to desired development outcomes.
The practice of gender budgeting is still relatively new, so it is practiced or implemented in various ways. For developed countries gender budgeting is very detailed with a lot of emphasis on taxation.
For developing countries such as Nigeria, the implementation of gender budgeting is more about the development of the bureaucratic culture and systems that allow you to carry out a realistic situational analysis of the problems and consider policy opportunities based on data driven evidence.
Interestingly, many African countries were among the earliest to adopt gender budgeting. South Africa was the first country in Africa to embrace gender budgeting, spurring initiatives in Uganda and Tanzania, which were then followed by efforts in other countries in the region. Nigeria has unfortunately been slow to recognise the benefits and adopt the process.
A lot of advocacy is necessary to turn the tide, but a little resistance remains. Most of the resistance comes from the fact that a lot of ground work still needed to be done. A lot of it is in the area of data collection and management.
One of the starting points in gender budgeting is data analysis. The collection of gender disaggregated data is a key element of gender budgeting, and unfortunately Nigeria has been slow and weak with regards to data management.
To understand why this is so important, let’s look at the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. In the early days of the lockdown, data was released on the number of persons who had tested positive, male vs female. That data showed that more men were testing positive.
This information would then be useful for medical research on a viable cure. But what we didn’t get was gender disaggregated data on how many people had been tested. We might have found that 90 per cent of those tested were men, in which case it would not be surprising that more men were also testing positive.
By stepping up the collection and analysis of gender-disaggregated data and giving an improved insight into the real added value generated by resources earmarked for women and for men, gender budgeting allows more equitable distribution of financial costs and benefits, while fostering more effective use of public funds.
Gender budgeting has three main objectives. First, it seeks to ensure that budget policies are equitable and to foster a reduction in inequalities and equality of opportunity, taking better account of the differing needs of women and men within the economy and society.
The second objective is to encourage more effective use of public spending, in keeping with predefined objectives, as regards the distribution of resources and services targeting men and women.
Gender budgeting accordingly aims to improve the quality and the efficiency of public services in line with the differing needs of male and female citizens.
The third objective is to give people a better grasp of public revenue and expenditure and ensure greater transparency of public policies implemented by national, regional and local authorities.
All in all, simply put, gender budgeting is good budgeting. It is taking the time to ensure that the budget will be fair to all citizens.
Does it not amount to discrimination against the disadvantaged gender?
Gender responsive budgeting is not about budgeting separately for the different sexes. It’s more about realising that opportunities are lost, inefficiencies are created when the budget process or document fails to incorporate all persons in the way revenue is raised, or expenditures made.
Some expenditure may seem to be ‘spent on women’s, an example is the push for increased spending on maternal and infant mortality. However, we must understand that projections that Nigeria may become one of the five economies by 2050 are driven largely by the expected population of 405 million. Without focusing on improving our maternal mortality, and infant mortality and morbidity, the quality of our human stock, to put it simply, will drag down rather than pull us into the top five.
I will give you another example; women are less likely to own cars. So, a well designed and built road is one of the key components of a gender responsive budget. Designing the road to provide for pedestrian traffic, designing the roads so that mothers with children can access public transport safely, and with dignity, is what gender responsive budgeting is all about.
Do you think gender budgeting is realistic in Nigeria considering the pending Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill (GEObill) and other laws yet to be implemented?
Gender budgeting is a very efficient process. It makes policy and legislation come to life. The GEO Bill and any other law or policy that are enacted to improve the lives of women, are meaningful only to the extent that they are incorporated into and brought to life through the budget process.
The struggle for gender equality has been a tough one in Nigeria, what do you think are the setbacks?
Gender equality is a very congested concept in Nigeria. From the religious and cultural angle we have had a tough time adapting its objectives to our civil space.
It’s often easier to think that the problem is simply that men don’t want women to be equal to them. Unfortunately it’s more than that.
We all, men and women, find it difficult to understand how our lives will change with the acceptance of equality.
On the positive side, we are continually making progress, even though it may not seem that way.
How can gender budgeting help in the development of Nigeria?
Gender responsive or sensitive budgeting is synonymous with good budgeting. Nigeria’s development rests on the extent to which its budget can activate social and economic growth.
When your budget process fails to holistically incorporate the resources of over 50 per cent of the population, that inefficiency will eventually hinder development.
Gender responsive budgeting, forces the legislature and executive to ask the right questions, to interrogate outcomes, to care about expectations, and these are the basics for national development.
Many gender advocates argue that having more women in policy making will change the narrative of the Nigerian women, do you agree?
Women certainly have more opportunities to change national narratives on the roles of women in society through participation in policy.
Getting involved in policy making is not as contested as getting women elected into executive or legislative positions.
Creating more opportunities in policy will require activating networks and showcasing it as a career.
What other gender dimensions do you think policy makers should also focus on?
I think that there is truly just one dimension for gender when it comes to public policy, and that is the promotion of women’s agency.
We should not define good and bad roles for women in public life. We should simply provide women, as we do with men, the civil space to define and live their lives as they may choose.
The #EndSARS protests took the country by storm, are their implications for women and girls?
The #EndSARS protest is an unscripted and organic manifestation of our human instinct for self protection. There is always a tipping and breaking point. On a larger scale it is an acknowledgement of failures in public policy and leadership.
A generation of Nigerians has voiced the pain that is living with us, and they speak not just for themselves. How this ends for good or bad, is up to those who are currently in leadership positions.
Would you say women and girls are voicing their needs?
Girls and women have been voicing their needs for centuries. In this more modern social media driven era, we must be careful to understand that ‘ the hearing’ of voices is often a curated process.
How would you rate government’s response to the recent protests so far?
Like said earlier, the #EndSARS protest is an unscripted and organic manifestation of our human instinct for self protection.
There is always a tipping or breaking point. On a larger scale it is an acknowledgement of failures in public policy and leadership.
A generation of Nigerians has voiced the pain that is living with us, and they speak not just for themselves.
How this ends, for good or bad, is up to those who are currently in leadership positions. However, so far, I have been unimpressed. So many missed opportunities.
