Three state governments. Three distinct design systems. One programme mission — transforming Nigeria's most inaccessible documents into publications that citizens can actually use to hold government accountable.
Nigeria's state budget documents are technical instruments designed for finance officials — not for the millions of citizens whose lives they shape. Every year, state governments approve budgets running into hundreds of billions of naira. And every year, those budgets remain invisible to the people they're meant to serve.
The Citizens' Budget is a deliberate intervention in that gap. It takes a government's full approved budget and translates it — visually, linguistically, and structurally — into a public document that any literate citizen can engage with independently. No economics degree required. No government contact needed.
Under the HOPE-GOV programme, GX was commissioned to design and produce Citizens' Budget documents for three northwestern Nigerian states — Katsina, Kebbi, and Zamfara — covering the 2026 fiscal year. Each document required a bespoke design system calibrated to the state's institutional identity. The Kebbi edition required full production in Hausa — a first for the state. Together, the three documents communicate over ₦2.4 trillion in public expenditure to the citizens who funded it.
20-page visual budget document for Katsina's ₦897.87bn approved budget. Bold charcoal and crimson design system. Covers revenue sources, 32 MDA expenditure breakdowns, sector analysis, and Education and Health deep-dives featuring capital project listings.
19-page fully Hausa-language Citizens' Budget — the first of its kind for Kebbi State. Every data label, heading, and fiscal term written and proofread in Hausa. Deep green and gold palette. Covers all major revenue streams, sectoral expenditure, ministry tables, and capital projects.
23-page comprehensive budget document for Zamfara's ₦871.34bn budget. Distinctive olive green and maroon design system with warm sand tones. Features donut chart sector breakdowns, capital expenditure by MDA, full ministry comparison tables, and Health and Education project listings.
The Kebbi State Citizens' Budget 2026 is not a translation — it is a complete rewrite in Hausa, structured, edited, and proofread to communicate fiscal data with cultural precision. Every term, from "Recurrent Revenue" (Kudin Shiga) to "Capital Development Fund" (Taimako da Tallafi), was deliberately chosen to be understood by a Kebbi citizen who has never opened a government budget document before.
This is GX's commitment to fiscal transparency that goes beyond design — into language, into culture, and into the lived reality of the communities these budgets are meant to serve.
Revenue and expenditure hierarchies visualised as proportional bubble chains — connecting source to destination in a single glance, without a single table.
Sector expenditure breakdowns rendered as multi-ring donut charts with clear labelling — showing proportional allocation across Social, Economic, Administrative, and Law & Justice sectors.
MDA-by-MDA expenditure ranked visually — so citizens can immediately identify the top-spending ministries without navigating a 30-row table.
Sector expenditure broken down using icon-paired data cards — Agriculture, Education, Health, Infrastructure — each with a distinct visual anchor for faster comprehension.
Each document opens with a distinct visual identity — Katsina's silhouette, Kebbi's dramatic fishing photograph, Zamfara's Budget House landmark — grounding fiscal data in place and civic pride.
2026 allocations compared against 2025 actuals with colour-coded % changes — so citizens can see exactly what grew, shrank, or held flat year on year across every ministry.
Education and Health receive dedicated pages — breaking expenditure to agency level, naming capital projects and specific hospital and school allocations citizens can verify on the ground.
Every word in the Kebbi document — data labels, headings, section titles, and fiscal terminology — written and proofread in Hausa by in-house experts with fiscal vocabulary fluency.
Three state budgets — each spanning hundreds of pages of technical documentation — distilled into clean, visual 20–23 page publications any literate Nigerian can navigate independently.
Kebbi State's Hausa edition is a landmark — making the state's fiscal data available in the majority language of its citizens for the first time in the state's history.
All three documents were officially published by their respective Ministries of Budget and Planning and distributed through government channels statewide.
All three documents were produced under the HOPE-GOV programme — contributing directly to Nigeria's national open budget accountability agenda and subnational fiscal transparency targets.
Each state received a bespoke design identity — Katsina's charcoal/crimson, Kebbi's deep green/gold, Zamfara's olive/maroon/sand — ensuring institutional distinctiveness across the programme.
Citizens' Budget design has become an annual engagement across multiple states — with GX established as the trusted fiscal communications design partner for Nigeria's northwest.
The Citizens' Budget should feel like a letter from government to the people it serves — not a technical report written for economists. GX understood that assignment across every one of these states.