Effect of Public Financial Management Reforms on Sustainability Management in Nigeria

This study investigates the effect of public financial management reforms on sustainability management in Nigeria over the period 2015–2025. Adopting an ex-post facto research design, the study relies on secondary data obtained from official publications of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF), National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), and relevant United Nations development databases. Public financial management reforms are proxied by the Treasury Single Account (TSA), Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS), Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), and Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while sustainability management is represented by Nigeria’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) performance score. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, stationarity tests, and Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) modeling were employed for data analysis using Python (version 3.11) with the pandas and statsmodels frameworks. The results reveal strong positive associations between TSA, GDP, and SDG performance, with IPPIS and GIFMIS also exhibiting supportive but comparatively weaker linkages. Stationarity tests confirm the suitability of the ARDL approach, while regression results indicate that public financial management reforms exert a positive influence on sustainability outcomes, although the effects are more pronounced in the long run. The findings suggest that improvements in fiscal consolidation, digital financial governance, and payroll control enhance Nigeria’s capacity to translate economic resources into sustainable development outcomes. The study concludes that while Nigeria’s public financial management reforms have strengthened sustainability management, their full impact depends on institutional efficiency and policy consistency. It therefore recommends continuous system integration, capacity building, and strengthened governance frameworks to maximize the sustainability gains of public financial management reforms.