Stakeholders at the United States Agency for International Development, State Accountability, Transparency, and Effectiveness, State2State Activity, have lauded its interventions.
The stakeholders spoke in Gombe during a two-day Gombe State quarterly Public Financial Management roundtable (Q3Y4).
Our Correspondent reports the Q3Y4 meeting which held from May 9 -10, had in attendance participants from Gombe State Ministries, Departments, and Agencies.
Recall that S2S supports states to plan and budget, raise revenues, increase civil society participation, and oversee service delivery in Health, Education, and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene sectors by building relevant capacities.
It’s implemented by Development Alternatives Incorporated.
Director of Administration and Finance, Fiscal Responsibility Commission, Gregory Lazarus, commended S2S for impacting the state positively through notable reforms.
Lazarus, while urging participants for rapt concentration noted that Gombe ranks highly following the support from USAID S2S.
“We need to focus our attention to the details of this engagement. USAID S2S intervention has yielded positive results in the rating of Gombe State as a state that upholds accountability, transparency and integrity,” he said.
Also speaking, Deputy Auditor-General of the state Wilson Yahaya, called for adequate attention of participants in order to justify their presence at the meeting.
Yahaya lauded S2S saying, “We are appreciative of the efforts of USAID through a number of its trainings and interventions which have yielded results in how the state is perceived. We must pay attention to the issues discussed.”
On her part, S2S Local Governance Manager, Zariyatu Abubakar-Hashidu, while anchoring on participants’s consent and expectation mapping urged appealed for the needed concentration as the Q3Y4 charts course of action for the state’s Public Financial Management.
Abubakar-Hashidu who presented on ‘Planned interventions for May -July 2024 and the roles of stakeholders’, urged participants to show commitment by expressing their thoughts, noting that by so doing the much desired development would be attained.
She urged government to formally appoint and inaugurate the board of Fiscal Responsibility Commission, “It will help a lot in giving support to the government in maintaining its posture in transparency, accountability. So, as a matter of urgency the board needs to be in place to leverage on the gains attained in States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability, and Sustainability,” Abubakar-Hashidu added.
On his part, S2S PFM Specialist, Oluwatosin Oke, while commenting on the results of the Fiscal Responsibility Compliance Assessment presented by the Fiscal Responsibility Commission during the meeting, encouraged MDAs to improve their compliance with the provisions of the Gombe State Fiscal Responsibility Law, adding “As only three MDAs got a rating of C after obtaining compliance scores between 51 per cent and 69 per cent which is just basic level of compliance as reported in the assessment.”
While applauding the three most compliant MDAs which are the Office of Accountant General which came first, the Ministry of Health which was rated second, and Gombe Internal Revenue Service in its third place, Oke advised the MDAs not to relent in their efforts to be fiscally responsible “as their current score and rating is far below the standard of excellence the state government will want all the MDAs to be,” he said.
He also observed that over 65 per cent of the MDAs that were assessed scored below 50 per cent and are rated D, a micro compliance level; which implies that majority of the MDAs in the state are not complying to all the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Law.
He added, “Four MDAs; Ministry of Water, Environment, and Forestry Resources, Ministry of Higher Education, ACReSAL, and Debt Management Agency were rated an F and considered to have zero compliance to the Law because some of them did not respond to the assessment when it was conducted.”
Oke concluded his remarks by encouraging the FRC to resensitise all MDAs in the state on the requirements of the Fiscal Responsibility Law and advised all MDAs to respond to the assessment with relevant evidence of their compliance to avoid an F rating in the 2024 assessment cycle.
The highlight of the two-day meeting was the discussion segment on what are the high-impact interventions that can sustain S2S reform gains in Gombe State beyond 2025?
