This was made known by the Director of Information, Press and Public Relations in the AGF Office, Henshaw Ogubike, who, however, promised that the platform would soon be restored.
The Office of Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF) has blamed the shutdown of the Open Treasury Portal on Galaxy Backbone, an ICT firm hosting the portal.
This was made known by the Director of Information, Press and Public Relations in the AGF Office, Henshaw Ogubike, who, however, promised that the platform would soon be restored.
In a chat with Daily Trust, Ogubike said the ICT firm, Galaxy Backbone was having some challenges.
“Galaxy Backbone is having some challenges. They are the ones hosting the portal. We are also under an obligation to use them. The problems will be resolved soon. Thanks,” he said.
The portal was initiated by the Nigerian government to provide comprehensive data of all Ministries, Departments and Agencies on budget implementation, financial records as well as transactions above certain thresholds.
SaharaReporters had reported earlier that a visit to the portal – http://opentreasury.gov.ng on Wednesday, was greeted with a blank page after which a prompt “the site can’t be reached” popped up on the page.
The implication of this is that details of the revenues and spending of ministries, departments and agencies of the federal government are unknown and they cannot be held accountable.
In December 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari launched the open treasury portal (OTP), an accountability platform, which seeks to enable “timely availability of financial information to the civil society organisations and the public at large by all MDAs of the federal government”.
He had directed MDAs to publish daily treasury summary statements of financial inflows and outflows.
Buhari said the Accountant General's office and all accounting officers must publish daily reports of their spending in the region of N10 million while all ministries, departments and agencies of government must do the same for payments above N5 million made from the public treasury.
Also, the AGF and all MDAs are expected to publish monthly budget performance reports, including their functions and economic activities performed by them within seven days to the end of the month.