PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY

PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY

Public accountability is as old as the existence of human beings in social forms. As old as it is, there remain problems as to what should and from age-old tradition implies stewardship.

One of the earliest records of this can be recalled from the allegory given by Christ Jesus in the gospel according to st. Matthew chapter 25 verse 27 of that chapter succinctly describes an expectation of stewardship. “Thou oughest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then on my coming I should have my own usury.

Accountability according to Nwabueze (2005) is synonymous with stewardship. In the public sector, there appears to be great demand for regular appraisal and reviews of financial performance of public sector bodies. It is also the basic requirement that every steward should be faithful.

Accountability then can be seen as involving: Exercising public power Giving an account of the action taken and Being held to account for those actions.

It is not function of the remuneration of the steward; rather it is a test of faithfulness and transparency. When a steward is faithful in little, much will be added to him. It is by a good performance at a lower post that promotion is gained to a higher post and remuneration is increased.

According to Oshisami (1993:188) accountability in government however goes beyond the stewardship function. The complexity of accountability has very serious consequences, when decisions taken by the public scrutiny particularly by those who were either not parties to those decisions or are even incapable of appreciating the intricacies of such decisions.

Oshisami (1994) identifies five known patterns of accountability viz. legal, political, and financial, ombudsman or public complaint and public opinion.

It would appear those public office holders are expected to show accountability in these five dimensions, our concern in these would be the financial accountability, but in brief mention should be made of legal and political accountability.

Public sector accountability can also be defined as those charged with drafting and| or carrying out policy should be obliged to given an explanation of their actions to their electorate being a composite group that include clients, employees and taxpayers.

Accountability is all about relationship both internally and externally. An important way to communicate accountability is through the provision of financial and related information.

The various aspects are: Financial accountability: it is the accounting system that is intended to keep a record of all legal authorizations as well as commitments, agreements, obligations and expenditure that use any part of authorization granted.

Legal accountability: it is primarily directed towards providing protection for the individual against administrative discretion.

Political and managerial accountability: they are concern with the provision of an account of why frauds are disbursed in a particular manner and what results or benefits thereby resulted.

So every financial accountability calls for:

a. Openly declared facts and open debate of them.

b. The giving of reasons for and explanation of actions taken.

Government accounting system is good but there is lots of accounting and financial control failures and public office holders tend to use these tapes as shield.

Accounting for the stewardship of public office holders and government officials is the basic concept of public accountability. It is the reckoning of revenue and expenditure, government programmers’ and management of the activities of the community. Civil servants have always been instructed by top government authorities to be accountable i.e. answerable to their responsibilities. They should give proper account of their stewardship regularly and most especially at the end of their tenure in the office.

The researcher has the view that the concept of public accountability is difficult to be put into practice in Nigeria because of self-centeredness, social and economic injustice.

In theory, accountability may be defined as process of justifying cost by presenting the positive effect derived from expenditures (Merhens and Lehrmann, 1974).