Against the backdrop of undesirable stewardship by some elected Representatives at both the National and State Assemblies, experts in Budget Processes , Henry Omokhaye and Isiyaku Ahmed have challenged Journalists and Civil society Organisations to use budgets Documents to track performances of their elected representatives.
The Experts gave the charge at a Two day Training Workshop on ” Tracking Constituency Projects ” Get Involved Dialogue and Improved Project, GDRIP, Organised by Stallion times Service, held in Lokoja Kogi state Capital.
In his lecture, Isiyaku Ahmed, who is the Editor in Chief of Stallion times and a media Content Developer, called on Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and the Media men to promote Citizens’ engagement in budgeting processes and ensure effective budget monitoring to achieve inclusive growth and developmentr
He urged them to make room for constituency projects monitoring and tracking the progress of such projects to ensure maintenance of standards.
He further enjoined CSOs and Media practitioners to ensure projects are assigned to appropriate Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) with the requisite mandate and capacity of overseeing them.
“The incapability of many MDAs to effectively supervise projects implementation, has led to poor execution of many projects, thereby wasting taxpayers funds”, he said.
Ahmed urged the CSOs and Media professionals to advocate for Standardised Platforms for Procurement especially, the establishment of E-procurement platforms to help government trim costs, check price inflation and set price guide for contracts.a
On his part , Henry Omokhaye of BudgIT , advocated for proper monitoring and tracking of Constituency Projects as a means to enhance good governance and development.
He added that laudable as the concept of constituency projects is, the implementation had often made nonsense of the good intentions behind it, making the objective unrealisable and depriving the constituents of the devidend of Democracy.
According to Omokhaye, the process of constituency project is often characterised by anomalies such as duplication of projects in annual budgets, shoddy execution of jobs
and in many cases, outright non-implementation.
He said because of the abnormalities in the implementation of constituency projects, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) came up with a programme called Constituency Project Tracking Group ( CPTG) in 2019, to change the narrative.
Omokhaye disclosed that CPTG recovered N 2billion from projects not executed in which money had been collected.
The workshop, according to the organisers aimed at building capacity of media practitioners and CSOs on budget processes and procedures and as well, train journalists and CSO advocates on how to track and monitor constituency projects.
It was also aimed at improving Journalists’ capacity in writing investigative stories on constituency projects.
The workshop took the media professionals CSO members through Budget Processes and Procedures, use of Media for Effective Advocacy, Budget Impact Analysis, Tracking Constituency Projects, Network and Coalition Building and Characteristics of Effective Coalition.
The workshop was organised by Stallion Times Media Services limited in collaboration with the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism and supported by MacArthur Foundation
