Publications

The commonest approach used in preparing budget in Nigerian tertiary institutions is incremental budgeting (IB).This involves a method where the previous year budget figures will be reviewed, usually upward to accommodateany expected increase in the following year’s budget. For this approach, the only source for preparing the budget isthe use of preceding year’s budget figures, with little or no consideration of other determining factors; not even withthe current or previous two years’ actual financial achievement/figures because hardly will they be available. Usuallythe Nigerian tertiary institutions audited accounts will not be ready until after three to four years after the end ofthe institutions’ financial years. Hence, the assumed justification for continuous use of IB budgeting system issimplicity of obtaining the data, and less time in its preparation. This is because the users of IB are reluctant to makeany further inquiry into the efficiency of the system to know whether the method is good enough to achieve thedesired performance of the institutions. However, some scholars have strongly criticized IB, because the system isrigid and the basis for preparing the budget could be misleading. This approach is further perceived to be weak andmay not be accepted if it should be sampled for opinion among the users of the budgeting system. This paperdiscussed the problems of incremental budgeting system in Nigeria