Groups task Kogi Govt. to increase resources for OGP commitments

From Joseph Amedu, Lokoja

The Initiative for Grassroot Advancement, (INGRA) Nigeria and the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room has called on the Kogi State Government to allocate more resources on the commitments for Open Government Partnership, (OGP). adsbygoogle || []).push({});

The groups made the call at a one day dissemination meeting of the Kogi State 2024 budget analysis to the Open Government Partnership, (OGP) organized by the Initiative for Grassroot Advancement in Nigeria, (INGRA) in partnership with Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room in Lokoja.

The Executive Director of INGRA Hamza Aliyu decried the poor resources allocated for the commitments of OGP in Kogi State stressing that, there is need for improvement which is in line with the initiative of OGP aimed at
promoting transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

Explaining reasons why the Kogi State Government should allocate more resources for OGP commitments, Aliyu said ” The main objective of this one day activities is to analyze the 2024 Kogi State revised budget and extract the component that has to do with OGP.

“We feel that we need to extract that aspect of it to bring out this commitments and see if this commitments aligns with that of the OGP and see how much of that money was budgeted for and how we can be able to track them subsequently using the Kogi State House of Assembly in knowing the expenditures in this commitments areas.

“The OGP has four thematic areas which are fiscal transparency, access to Information, service delivery and extractive Sector Transparency. The five commitments under this thematic areas are enhance citizens participation in the State budget cycle, strengthen public procurement processes in Kogi State, Improve Citizens Access to Government Held Information and Records.

“Other commitments are: Improve Service Delivery in Kogi State through the introduction of service compact and Work together with relevant stakeholders towards enhancing healthy well-being of mining host communities.

“Now, we are looking at the quantum of resources that was allocated to the OGP commitments and we observed that it is a little bit small in terms of size. But of course, this is the first time the State is doing this so we can appreciate the State Government but we are saying we need to improve the amount of resources we are putting.

“Again looking at the comparison between the amount of money that was spent on OGP which has to do with Citizens and their engagement, we are also comparing it with the amount of money that has been spent by the state as a whole and we are saying it is really small again.

“Going forward, we need to increase this percentage between the resources given to commitment and OGP which is what Citizens are expecting and then the expenditure Government itself in other areas of recurrent and over head expenses. We are saying they need to increase this resources going forward.

“One commitment that stands out is that of extractive industry transparency. There is a commitment that they need to work with communities in the extractive industry which is the coal mine, Obajana community to be able to discuss issues around environment pollution and how it affects the Citizens and the amount allocated to Ministries, Department and Agencies, (MDA’s) by the Government. So we are very happy about that one.