Today, governance has been recreated by new paradigm shift of what is called citizens-budget by all states of the country, Nigeria.
The States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) program seeks to improve and strengthen fiscal management and entrench transparency and accountability mechanisms that ensure efficient utilization of public funds that improve public service delivery.
As an implementing agency of the SFTAS Program, the Nigeria Open Government Partnership (OGP) Secretariat is providing technical assistance to the states to achieve the Disbursement Linked Indicator 2(DLI), increased citizens participation in the budget process as well as the implementation of the broader Open Government Principles.
To ensure that States have a clear understanding of the program expectation for 2021 with respect to DLI 2, the OGP Secretariat prepared the following checklist which outlines clear and detailed information on the prerequisites to be met, to achieve the DLI 2 for 2021 and the upcoming year 2022. The states need to publish approved annual 2021 State Budget online by January 31, 2021, (The approved annual budget for 2021 is expected to be completed and published online for citizens by January 31, 2021).
At this point, your state should have met this deadline), publish citizens inputs from formal public consultations for the preparation of the 2021 Budget by January 31, 2021 (This is a report, jointly signed by government and citizens led groups, of the public consultation for the preparation of the 2021 budget.
A document on the inputs generated by citizens during budget preparation engagements for the 2021 Budget must be published online for citizens by January 31, 2021. At this point, your state should have met this deadline.), publish citizens budget version made from the approved 2021 annual state budget online by April, 30, 2021.
(The citizens budget version developed from the 2021 approved annual state budget detailing government spending and revenue with information on priority areas and projects must be published online latest by end of April 2021), publish citizens accountability report based on audited financial statements/reports published online by September 30, 2021 (The citizens accountability report detailing information summarizing government engagement with citizens, spending, citizens-nominated projects, projects implemented through citizens consultation and audited financial statements for 2020 must be published by September 2021), the OGP Secretariat is working to provide states template to work with. The Open Government Partnership (OGP) will be in touch with states on these issues to train state officials on how to use it and publish proposed budget for 2022 annual state spending as submitted to the State House of Assembly online by December 31, 2021 (The proposed budget for the State for year 2022 as presented to the State House of Assembly must be published by end of December 2021).
This is expected to encourage States to conduct necessary engagement with relevant stakeholders in preparation of the budget.The OGP National Coordinator, Dr. Anne Nzegwu, who spoke at the South East workshop on permanent dialogue mechanisms held in Enugu noted that OGP is a global platform of reformers, in collaboration with Civil Society and Private Sectors Stakeholders working to make the lives of ordinary citizens better by entrenching transparency and accountability through citizens participation.
OGP is founded on the core principles of co-creation, access to information and transparency. The beauty of this process is that the government and citizens represented by CSOs, Organised Private Sector, Trade Unions and Faith-based groups come together to co-create and implement transformative commitments.
She pointed out some of the successes that have been recorded since the journey of working hand in hand with citizens to improve governance and government has begun, the yearly publication of citizens budgets, the development and deployment of the Nigeria Open Contracting Portal (NOCOPO), the amendment of the Companies and Allied Matters Act, which has provisions for Nigeria to begin the implementation of beneficial ownership transparency, improvement in the implementation of the freedom of information Act, adding that most MDAs now have assigned FOI Desk Officers responding to FOI requests from citizens, thereby, reducing the turnover time for responses to FOI Requests.
In his contribution, the Civil Society Specialist of States Fiscal Transparency Accountability and Sustainability, (SFTAS/OGP), Abayomi Akinbo urged participants of the workshop to take the training home and ensure that other civil society organizations understand what SFTAS means, especially that governance can only be taken home if the government of the day imbibes the practice of citizens budget where the inputs and priority of the community needs are captured in the budget. The citizens should work with the demand side leaders who are the House of Assembly lawmakers in this process.
Imo state for example can save a lot of money, boost her internally generated revenue through the Treasury Single Account (TSA), biometric capture of civil servants to reduce incidence of ghost workers, engage stakeholders and citizens in her budget process and reintroduce the public hearing system in the budget process.
The development of a state does not only come from how much IGR the state generates, there must be a good governance platform through a policy that is practical for other international donor agencies to work with in that state. The multiplier effect of having avalanche of international donor agencies doing one project or another in a state is manifold.
The civil society organizations, SMEs, artisans, media, professional bodies, citizens, non-state actors will all benefit from the myriad of activities going on.In the southeast, Anambra is the most friendly state for international donor projects because there is visible, realistic and working policies that make them throng into the state.
No serious international agencies will work in a state that doesn’t have clear cut governance policies like OGP, International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS), SFTAS, national charter of account, among others because these are the fulcrum upon which governance thrive.
My visit to Anambra communities when I was the Team Lead for the Federal Government/Worldbank National Social Safety Net Project (NASSP) for Conditional Cash Transfer aimed at pulling the poor and vulnerable out of poverty, I saw alot of projects by Worldbank, RAMP, EU, USAID, providing electricity, motorized boreholes, community roads, provisions of oil mill among others.
Anambra generates more money from the international agencies so much so that it may have paid salaries from the funds coming from here. The state does not also hesitate in paying her counterpart funds for some of these projects to kick start.Tell me a state that’s developed and I will show you a state that’s OGP compliant.
I appreciate the OGP Secretariat, because they have continued to provide support to state to meet up with each timeline/checklist for each stage. OGP is a serious platform that insists on following strictly on the procedures. Imagine scaling through each process and you earn money.
The money earned doing the right thing vis-a-vis the SFTAS template is far more better that what one loses, doing otherwise.
The states should work with the civil society organizations (CSOs) like we have been trained by OGP to provide support especially as it regards ensuring that each stage/checklist is done on time.
All hands must be on deck by both the supply and demand sides to achieve this and there is no better time than now.
