“A Budget Is a Moral Contract Between Government, Citizens”: Kano Budget Commissioner

By Abdullahi Alhassan

Kano, Nigeria–June 10, 2026(Series News Online)- The Kano State Government has repositioned Public Financial Management, PFM, reforms as the foundation of its development strategy, insisting that a budget must function as more than revenue and spending projections.  

The Commissioner for Planning and Budget, Alhaji Musa Sulaiman Shanono, made this known on Tuesday while declaring open a four-day workshop on HOPE-GOV Assessment and Health Budget Implementation Reporting in Kaduna.  

“A budget is no longer just a statement of projected revenues and expenditures, but a moral contract between government and citizens,” Alhaji Shanono said.  

The workshop was organized by the Kano State Ministry of Planning and Budget in partnership with the International Budget Partnership, IBP, and funded by the Gates Foundation. It is designed to improve outcomes of the HOPE-GOV programme and strengthen Primary Health Care delivery in the state.  

Alhaji Shanono said the government had in recent months introduced far-reaching reforms focused on efficient allocation, fiscal discipline and citizen inclusion in budget formulation.  

“Over the past months, the government has rolled out aggressive reforms aimed at ensuring allocation efficiency, fiscal discipline, and citizens’ participation, so that the voices of the people are reflected in the budget process,” he said.  

He described the HOPE-GOV Assessment as a timely tool for converting broad fiscal policies into measurable gains at sector level.  

“The HOPE-GOV Assessment serves as a timely framework that helps translate macro-level fiscal reforms into micro-level sector successes,” the commissioner said.  

Alhaji Shanono cautioned that governance assessments should be viewed as tools for introspection rather than condemnation.  

“Governance assessments are not instruments of criticism but mirrors for self-reflection,” he said.  

He explained that the assessment would provide data to evaluate the effectiveness of governance structures in health service delivery.  

“Therefore, the HOPE Assessment provides us with the empirical baseline needed to evaluate how effectively our governance structures support health service delivery, as well as allowing us to pinpoint bottlenecks in fund releases, assess bureaucratic hurdles, and optimize the value-for-money ratio in every naira spent on public health,” Alhaji Shanono said.  

The commissioner warned that increased budgetary allocation to health would be meaningless without visible results at facility level.  

“If the government allocates a large percentage of its budget to the health sector without translating those allocations into functional Primary Health Care facilities, available commodities, well-trained staff, and reduced maternal mortality, then the PFM reforms remain incomplete,” he said.  

On the focus of the workshop, Alhaji Shanono said Health Budget Implementation Reporting would be central to tracking outcomes.  

“The workshop will focus on Health Budget Implementation Reporting, which is critical. Real-time, accurate, and transparent reporting bridges the gap between intention and impact, and ensures proper tracking mechanisms to monitor funds from the central treasury down to frontline health clinics across the local government areas in the state,” he said.  

He urged participants, technical teams and Civil Society Organizations, CSOs, to engage robustly and help design practical reporting models for integration into Kano’s planning systems.  

“I call on participants, technical teams, and Civil Society Organizations to participate actively, challenge existing paradigms, and co-create practical reporting frameworks that can be seamlessly integrated into Kano State’s planning and budgetary systems,” Alhaji Shanono said.