Tinubu Increases CCB Budget from N3bn to N20bn

President Bola Tinubu has approved a significant increase in the budget of the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) from about N3 billion to nearly N20 billion, in a move aimed at reforming the nation’s asset declaration regime, strengthening verification processes, and enhancing enforcement capacity across the public service.

The Chairman of the Code of Conduct Bureau, Dr Abubakar Bello, disclosed this on Sunday in Abuja during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), explaining that the budgetary boost would enable the bureau to address long-standing operational challenges and modernise its systems.

Bello said the increased funding would be deployed toward technological upgrades, improvement of the bureau’s working environment, and the overhaul of the largely manual asset declaration process, which he described as outdated, inefficient, and difficult to manage.

He recalled that upon assuming office, he discovered that asset declaration relied heavily on paper forms that were scarce, expensive to print, and difficult to store, analyse, and verify, noting that the situation was compounded by the 2025 budget provision of only about N70 million for printing forms for over 4.5 million public servants nationwide.

To mitigate the challenge, Bello said the bureau temporarily adopted a model inspired by Kenya by uploading declaration forms on its website for download, but stressed that the approach only addressed availability and not the fundamental weakness of a manual system.

“The budget increase approved by President Tinubu is to overhaul our outdated asset declaration system and strengthen verification and enforcement to make the bureau more effective. It will fund critical technological upgrades and improve our overall operational capacity,” Bello said.

“We are now at an advanced stage of developing a fully online asset declaration platform that will link key databases such as CAC, FIRS, BVN, land registries and other government records, while deploying artificial intelligence to flag unexplained wealth and possible breaches,” he added.

Bello said the digital platform, expected to be ready by the first quarter of 2026, would be a game changer, warning public servants that failure to declare assets or comply with verification could lead to forfeiture, investigation, and prosecution, in line with the bureau’s guiding principle of “Declare or Forfeit.”