After years of relentless pressure and advocacy, the National Assembly has finally released the breakdown of its budget (pdf) in the 2017 Appropriations Bill which it just passed. This is a break from its tradition where it only included a single-line item of how much it was allocating to itself without giving a detailed breakdown of how the monies are to be spent.

This is the result of sustained pressure on and advocacy to the National Assembly by citizens and civil society organizations such as BudgIT, which together with another CSO, Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC) sued the National Assembly over its refusal to make its  budget public even after a Freedom of Information (FoI) request was served on it.

The case to make the budget public was strengthened as both the Senate President Bukola Saraki and the Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara both pledged to make it public while running for their positions. The hashtag #OpenNASS was constantly used on Twitter to sustain that pressure to make good their promises. Yet, it took almost two years for that to happen.

This is an excellent example of what public pressure and advocacy can do to force government institutions and public office holders to do the right thing. Despite the fact that the Federal Government has for the past six years at least, released its budget details when submitting the Appropriation Bill to the legislature, the National Assembly considered itself above that and refused to do same.

It is common knowledge that lack of information offers the perfect cover for governments and persons to not be accountable to the people – this is why the passing of the Freedom of Information Bill in 2011 and its signing into law was a huge deal, because it empowers citizens to demand and obtain information from the government and its agencies.

This move by the National Assembly will go further to entrench accountability and transparency in the legislature and make citizens more involved in political participation as it arms them with information to perform oversight over the Assembly.

However, the march towards accountability is not over – Nigerians are still not sure how much legislators collect in salaries, allowances and emoluments. They are still not sure if there is really anything like constituency allowances, how they are paid and if their spending is monitored. These facts are kept like a closely guarded secret.

The next step is for the National Assembly to make public how much its members collect in salaries and allowances. This is necessary because without doing so, the electorate will continue to have the impression that the Assembly is filled with fat cats who are living off the country and not doing anything in return. As such, it will become difficult for the public to empathise with them even when they have difficulties.

Another area of accountability that needs to be enshrined is the manner of voting of the National Assembly, where voice votes are used rather than the electronic voting system, which curiously was installed as the Assembly was built in 1998, but has never been used. With the current voice vote method, it is hard to know how legislators voted and they cannot be held accountable for their votes.

While the National Assembly has finally done the right thing, it should also know that pressure on it to be completely transparent will not cease.

One battle has been won, but the war is still on.