AIYEKOOTO : THE ASYMMETRY OF SACRIFICE: FISCAL REALITIES AND THE DEMAND FOR ACCOUNTABILITY

By Lanre Ogundipe

There is an unwritten social contract between a government and the people it governs. When a country enters a period of economic hardship and citizens are told that difficult choices are necessary to restore stability, those who manage public resources are expected to demonstrate that the burden is being shared.

That expectation is neither unreasonable nor revolutionary. It is the elementary politics of sacrifice.

Nigerians have been asked to endure a difficult adjustment. Fuel subsidy removal altered household expenditure. Electricity tariffs have risen. Transport costs have placed additional pressure on family budgets. The tax system is being restructured, with government seeking to widen the revenue base and improve compliance. The argument from government is that these measures are necessary to rebuild public finances and create a more sustainable economy.

The argument can be understood.

But fiscal discipline cannot be a one way demand.

Citizens who are being asked to adjust their lives are entitled to look in the direction of government and ask a simple question: what is government doing to reduce its own waste, inefficiency and avoidable expenditure?

That question is not an argument against reform. It is an argument for credibility.

The Federal Government has repeatedly identified fiscal discipline, improved revenue mobilisation, spending efficiency and stronger public financial management as important elements of its reform programme. The 2026 budget has also been presented as a budget of consolidation, with emphasis on growth, infrastructure, security and fiscal discipline.

But policy declarations are only one side of the equation. The other is what citizens can see in the conduct of government.

A government cannot reasonably ask households to distinguish between necessities and luxuries while public institutions appear unable to demonstrate the same discipline in their own spending. Every unnecessary official vehicle, avoidable administrative expense, poorly justified project or opaque allocation becomes more than a financial issue when ordinary citizens are being told to tighten their belts.

The issue is not whether government should spend.

Government must spend. It must build roads, provide security, maintain hospitals, educate children, support institutions and invest in infrastructure. Nor is every administrative expenditure wasteful simply because it appears large.

The real issue is value.

What does the public receive for the money being spent?

That is the question that should sit at the centre of fiscal accountability.

Debt service presents another dimension of the problem. Government must service its obligations. Failure to do so would create its own economic consequences. But the larger the share of public resources committed to servicing debt, the greater the pressure on the resources available for productive investment and essential services.

This is why citizens are entitled to ask where the remaining resources are going, what has been prioritised and whether every expenditure represents the best use of scarce public money.

The same principle applies to taxation.

The government has explained that its current tax reform is intended primarily to broaden the tax base, improve compliance and make administration more transparent rather than simply increase tax rates. The new tax framework took effect from January 1, 2026, and the government has continued to describe fairness and administrative certainty as important objectives.

That explanation deserves to be tested by implementation.

A wider tax net can be justified if it produces a fairer system. But fairness cannot end with the taxpayer. It must extend to the way government spends the revenue collected.

The citizen who pays more tax has a legitimate right to ask what becomes of the money.

The small business owner who complies has a right to expect that government will confront waste with the same seriousness with which it pursues compliance.

The worker whose disposable income has been squeezed has a right to expect evidence that the state is exercising comparable restraint.

This is where leadership presence becomes important.

Economic reform is not merely an exercise in numbers. It is also an exercise in trust. People are more willing to endure difficult measures when they understand why those measures are necessary, what they are intended to achieve and how long the adjustment is expected to last.

They also need to know what safeguards exist against abuse.

Government cannot communicate only the pain citizens must endure. It must also communicate the discipline being imposed upon itself.

Where revenue increases, citizens should be able to follow the broad chain from collection to allocation and from allocation to results. Where savings are promised, the public should be able to see where those savings have been redirected. Where waste is identified, somebody should be held responsible for correcting it.

This is not an argument for government by publicity.

It is an argument for government by evidence.

There is a temptation in times of economic difficulty to describe every criticism of fiscal reform as resistance to change. That is unfair. A citizen can support economic reform and still question the manner in which government spends public money.

Indeed, credible reform requires such scrutiny.

The government itself says its fiscal reform agenda is intended to strengthen transparency, accountability, revenue mobilisation and spending efficiency. The ongoing ARMOR programme, for example, is explicitly built around improving domestic revenue mobilisation, public financial management and fiscal sustainability.

The test, therefore, is not whether government can produce another reform document.

The test is whether the principles of that reform can be seen in government itself.

This is where Aiyekooto must ask the uncomfortable question.

Can a government demand sacrifice from society while failing to demonstrate sufficient sacrifice within the machinery of government?

The answer should not be supplied by speeches. It should be visible in expenditure decisions, procurement, administrative overheads, project selection, institutional discipline and the consequences imposed when public money is misused.

The parrot does not object to belt tightening. It objects to a belt that appears to tighten only around the waist of the citizen.

Fiscal reform will endure only when people believe that the burden is being distributed with fairness and that those entrusted with public resources are subject to the same discipline they demand from everyone else.

The ultimate issue is therefore not austerity.

It is reciprocity.

If citizens must make sacrifices to rescue the public finances, those who control the public purse must be prepared to demonstrate, in their own conduct, that the sacrifice is genuinely collective.

Otherwise, patience becomes another word for asking the least powerful to carry the heaviest burden.

Ogundipe, Public Affairs Analyst, former President Nigeria and Africa Union of Journalists writes from Abuja.