The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has initiated a nationwide transition of sub-national fiscal data collection from manual questionnaires to an automated survey platform across all 36 states, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and 774 Local Government Areas.
Dr. Usman Moses Okpanachi, Director of the CBN Statistics Department, disclosed during a stakeholder engagement in Abeokuta, Ogun State, that the digital platform aims to eliminate delays and errors in public finance reporting.
The technical rollout, which commenced on October 26, 2026, aims to improve the precision, validation speed, and consistency of sub-national revenue, expenditure, and debt metrics submitted by state and local government fiscal officers.
As of November 6, 2026, practical modules covering digital submissions were completed across 16 states and their corresponding local governments, recording nearly 100% attendance among participating sub-national finance officials.
The nationwide state-level onboarding exercise is scheduled for completion by December 4, 2026, followed immediately by the final technical integration of the Federal Capital Territory on December 9 and 10, 2026.
Once fully deployed, sub-national officers will submit standardized returns directly to the CBN Statistics Department, which will consolidate the datasets into a comprehensive national public finance report for policy design and evaluation.
Real-time integration of sub-national revenue and spending dynamics is designed to directly strengthen the apex bank’s broader data transformation agenda, sharpening its liquidity management, macroeconomic modeling, and inflation forecasting capabilities.
This technology-driven push follows a formal Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Federal Government and the CBN in September to align fiscal and monetary strategies, addressing long-standing structural recommendations from the International Monetary Fund.
