Assessing the Performance of Incremental Budgeting System in the Nigerian Public Tertiary Institutions

Abstract

Focused and futuristic organizations like Nigerian tertiary institutions are expected to put in place a financial plan of its activities to guide on how to generate financial resources and allocate them to achieve predetermined target or goal in a particular period or year. This is usually carried out through budget. A committee is usually constituted to capture each functional unit of a tertiary institution to ensure coordination and full implementation of the budget. However, the full implementation may assumed not be feasible because of the continuous use of incremental budgeting (IB) system. The paper is to  find out whether budget performance in the Nigerian tertiary institutions is dependent on the IB system and  also to assesses if the IB‘s frame work is dynamic to provide for any material change in the institutions’ projects. Primary source of data were used. The two major findings are that, budget performance is not depending on the use of incremental budgeting system and that inadequate and delay in releasing subventions from federal government are responsible for the budget implementation breakdown. The paper recommends that Nigerian government should timely release approved subventions to these institutions to enhance reasonable implementation of annual budget.

Key Words: Nigerian tertiary institutions, budget, incremental budgeting system, budgeting performance