A non-governmental organisation, the Accountability Lab, has called for more citizen engagement in the procurement process for the quality and timely implementation of projects in Ekiti State.
The Country Director of Accountability Lab, Friday Odeh, spoke in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, during a stakeholder’s engagement in partnership with the Ekiti state government on Open Contracting and Project Accountability
The initiative, captured under the UNDP-funded anti-corruption and innovation project (ACIP), engaged various stakeholders across ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) and civil society organisations (CSOs), among others in the state.
Odeh noted that the engagement, which is being done across the three states of Plateau, Edo, and Ekiti, was necessary to link public procurement data to services and enhance transparency, accountability, and governance in public projects by fostering a culture of improved and quality public service delivery.
Speaking on the challenges identified during the comprehensive monitoring of health and education projects in the state, he commended the state government on the successes achieved but called for more improvement in project implementation.
Odeh said, “I will rate the state high, but there is always room for improvement. Of the twenty-four education and health projects that we monitored across the State, we have seen a lot of them working, and we have seen a lot of them dilapidated
“ Part of the challenges we have observed is how this affects the health and wellbeing of the people, not just the health but also the security in terms of the schools.
“ The security concern should also be a priority. We are pushing that to the government as an advocacy to see that they address some of these issues not just at the procurement level but beyond the procurement level.
“The citizen engagement is to help citizens build power to not just report as beneficiaries of these projects being implemented by the government but to ensure that the government projects serve them in a way that benefits them and the democracy as well.”
Speaking, the Director General of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), James Folorunso, commended the organisation for generating the feedback mechanism on government-funded projects to ensure transparency and accountability.
While reiterating the commitment of his agency towards achieving the shared prosperity agenda of Governor Biodun Oyebanji, he vowed to use his office to strengthen the implementation aspect of the capital projects in the state to make sure that there is value for the money on the projects.
The DG said, “I want to say that Governor Biodun Oyebanji’s administration has the mandate to deliver the dividends of democracy to the Ekiti people, and we are all aware of the mantra of this administration, which is shared prosperity.
“We are going to be improving what we met on the ground, and from the Bureau of Public Procurement, it’s for us to strengthen the procurement and implementation aspects of the capital project to make sure that there is value for money.
“We will make sure that whatever the government is committed to, it is actualized. We are going to be following the work of the contractors; we will follow up with the MDAs involved in the release of funds to make sure that this circle of project implementation is completed.”
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