The head of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria said last week the Accountability Index would focus on policy-based fiscal forecasting, budget scrutiny and audit, budget credibility and management of assets and debts.

The initiative, introduced last month, will help tackle corruption and improve governance in at a federal, state and local government level, a number of local news outlets reported.

ICAN president Razaq Jaiyeola said: “The objective is to assess the performance of the various tiers of government – federal, state and local governments.

“We want to measure their performance, we will rank them and from such rankings, we would be able to address certain things within the financial management mechanism that we have in the country.”

He made the presentation of the index to members of the Federation Account Allocation Committee.

He said the five pillars and indicators of the index would help the institute rank the performance of the governments. These include budgeting, management of assets, debts, audit and public accounts.

“At the end of the day, each pillar will be ranked and we will have various scores by each state, each local government, by the various agencies of government and by the time that is done, we will know how each state is performing, we will know how each ministry is performing [and] it will address a lot of things that will move our nation forward,” he said.

Jaiyeola said that there would be a lot of improvements in the public accounting system, which would enhance the International Public Sector Accounting Standards in Nigeria.