Rivers State governance and transparency advocates are reacting today to a new report by the Paradigm Leadership Support Initiative (PLSI), which ranks Rivers State 36th in Nigeria. The 2025 Subnational Audit Efficacy (SAE) Index, unveiled in Abuja on Tuesday, March 31, 2026, placed Rivers at the absolute bottom of the federation’s accountability ladder with a score of just 9%. This ranking, shared with Abia State, highlights a severe institutional failure in the management and auditing of public funds within the “Garden City” and its surrounding local government areas.
The 2025 Index introduced a modified methodology six years later, incorporating audit functions at the local government level to provide a more holistic view of subnational spending. According to PLSI Executive Director Olusegun Elemo, the assessment used a 80% weighting for state-level performance and 20% for local government data. While Ekiti State emerged as the national leader with a transparent score of 72%, the poor performance of Rivers State marks a significant regression from previous years. Analysts suggest this decline stems from a persistent failure to publish timely audit reports and a lack of administrative independence for the Office of the Auditor-General.
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Structural weaknesses in the Rivers State accountability framework were a focal point of the report. In the 2024 financial year, Rivers was among the 18 states that failed to publish comprehensive audit reports on state accounts and among the 21 states that neglected local government account disclosures. Furthermore, the index revealed that the state has yet to grant full financial autonomy to its audit institutions, leaving critical oversight functions vulnerable to executive influence. “While the national average rose slightly to 34.5%, states like Rivers are dragging the federation’s progress back,” Elemo noted during the presentation.
The PLSI has urged the Rivers State Government to urgently establish an Audit Service Commission to guarantee the independence of its auditors. The report also emphasized that only three states currently have effective Public Accounts Committees (PACs) capable of enforcing audit recommendations, a major gap in the Rivers State House of Assembly’s oversight cycle. Governance experts argue that without these checks and balances, the state’s high internally generated revenue (IGR) remains susceptible to mismanagement and a lack of public scrutiny.
