Group harps citizen’s participation in ensuring accountability
Chima Azubuike, Gombe
Inclusive Forum for Accountable Society (IFAS), has urged Government at all levels to involve citizen’s participation to engender sustainability and accountability in programmes.
Speaking on Thursday, at a capacity building and strategy meeting in Gombe, organised by Joint Association of people with Disability with support from ActionAid Nigeria, Bashama Yusuf, said citizens must realise they have roles to play in ensuring good governance.
Yusuf who doubles as the resource person for the forum and ActionAid contact of IFAS in Gombe state, added that citizens must desist from seeing the fiscal Budget as just a document but must pick deliberate interest in it implementation.
He said, “This a citizen’s led platform that aims at promoting citizen’s participation for effective governance in their communities. The idea is to motivate citizens to know that they have a responsibility in making governance work.
“Far from it where citizens just watch government make mistakes but citizens can engage government and they can contribute their quota; so now they know that there are a lot of things they can do to make it work. We have resolved to work in a few areas one of which is Education, Youth, Agriculture this will make more people come out of poverty.
“This meeting brought together civil society organizations, representatives of key ministries about five of them these includes; Education, Youth, Women Affairs, Agriculture and National Directorate of Employment (NDE), National Orientation Agency (NOA), they are all relevant in encouraging citizen’s participation in inclusive and accountable governance.”
While assuring of the gains of citizen’s participation in policy formulation, Yusuf noted that continuous and steady enlightenment will empower residents on their roles.
“As a people we have agreed that at the end of the day to sensitise more citizens to understand the importance of public budget because we realised that citizens are not interested in the Budget. They think it is government property.
Participants were so motivated they have seen the light, they are encouraged. They have made their commitment.
“I call on government to be more proactive. They must put citizens first; government must work with citizen’s priorities, citizens interest, that will help them deliver more on citizens interest. When citizens are consulted they own the process, they take ownership then sustainability becomes easy,” he added.
