Kwara State government has been advised to adopt the Open Government Partnership (OGP) strategy to attract international donor agencies that will complement development efforts in local government areas of the state.
Speaking at the local right programme (LRP) endline impact assessment validation meeting of the Centre for Community Empowerment and Poverty Eradication (CCEPE) in Ilorin, the CEO of the civil society organisation, Abdurrahman Ayuba, said that there are millions of dollars being expended in other states under the state-to-state governance initiative projects.
“OGP, a global initiative is meant to ensure citizens’ participation in government. And to achieve that, the government should embrace the co-creation principle of the OGP. There should be an equal number of government agencies and CSOs in identified government priority areas and not a one-sided thing. OGP actually started at the national level with President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016. Some states have signed the OGP and are enjoying it in form of development projects and economic opportunities.
“International donor agencies are ever ready to commit finance to development. As I’m talking with you there are millions of dollars being expended in other states under the state-to-state governance initiative projects. It’s about transparency and accountability to enhance good governance and accountability and to attract donor agencies to the states,” he said.
Also speaking, Partnership and Local Right programme manager, Actionaid Nigeria, Kehinde Arowosegbe, said that government should be more friendly with CSOs and see them as partners in progress to attract more donor agencies to the state.
“When a state government is proactive and friendly with CSOs, donors would be happy to come and invest in such states. Some organizations want commitment from the government to sustain what they are bringing to the state; with that, they’ll be very much willing to come.
“ActionAid Nigeria came to the state 15 years ago, if we had not had the support from the government, we would have gone for a long. And people would not have benefitted from our intervention in those areas. So, the government should continue to partner CSOs.
“We have done a lot of programmes for people such as health hospitals, water, seedlings, capacity empowerment, garri processing factories, and return-to-school programme among youth, especially girls. Our projects are biased towards women because women are most marginalized. Men subjugate them in some harmful traditional practices against women’s progress,” he said.
Some recommendations of the programme include: “Efforts of ActionAid Nigeria to people of Asa and Kaiama LGAs are less than a drop of water in an ocean. The state and local governments need to urgently support these efforts to deliver overall democratic dividends to the citizenry.
“In the face of unstable oil revenue culminating to decline of national allocation to state and local governments, the state needs to increase its internal revenue generation to meet its obligations to her citizens.
“The state and local government might want to adopt the progressive realization model as a paradigm shift and alternative agenda to achieve more with little resources that make much difference in the lives of citizens.
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