(Department of Public Administration, Nasarawa State University Keffi., 2016-07-21) Itodo, Sylvanus Mohammed; Onodugo, I.C.
The stories of disparity' between budget and its implementation in Nigerian public sector
are replete in newspapers, public discourses and academic journals. Reasons advanced for
this include: corruption, fluctuating oil revenue, unstable economic parameters and poor
budget monitoring. The main thrust of this paper was to examine the reasons and solutions
to budget implementation challenges in Nigerian local governments and to show how it has
affected their performance. The expo methodology' was adopted and found the above
assertions to be true. We recommend that any new budget effort should include gain
sharing or similar incentives for agencies to perform as well as disincentives for agencies
that perform poorly. The paper concludes that budgeting systems are most successful when
they are coordinated and assisted by a government’s central administrative unit.