NGO sensitises students on accountability, transparency

AN NGO, Connected Development on Tuesday extended its programme of mobilising Nigerian students to follow and monitor projects in their respective domains towards accountability and transparency.

Malam Hazat Lawal, its National Coordinator made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Zaria, Kaduna State.

Lawal spoke on the sideline of the programme tagged: “Follow the Money Campus Tour” held at the main campus of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Samaru, Zaria.

He said Follow the Money Campus Tour was more concerned about how money meant for a particular project(s) were being utilised in a judicious and transparent manner especially at the grassroots levels.

He said: “For us, we believed that the academic space plays a huge role and they have potentials because when you look at research around the world it comes from the academics.

“You can only get research and statistics from the academics and we believe that young people have a role to play in nation-building, leadership and democratic governance.

“So, we started this initiative called `Follow the Money Campus Tour’ with the University of Jos and today we are here in ABU, Zaria.”

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Lawal said the essence of the programme was to equip the young people with tools, information and organise them better on how to hold their government to account.

“And more importantly, to have a dialogue or conversation between students and lecturers, we have doctors and professors in our panel.

“Also to invite other Federal Government Agencies like the ICPC and National Human Right Commission just to share what they are doing as a regulatory agency or enforcement agency.

“We can then collaborate more, as students when they leave the academic space they have a compulsory one-year NYSC scheme, this skills and knowledge will be useful to them during the scheme to leverage on technology.

“Every young person today is on social media because they have smartphones, so how can they document voices at the grassroots where people cannot easily reach and send us low time information.

“So we can form policy and decision making so that Nigeria could be on the pathway of achieving sustainable development goals,” he said.

He said “Follow the Money Campus Tour” was restricted to higher institutions like Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education, adding that they had identified ABU as the rallying point.

Lawal observed that for Nigeria to develop as a country, there was every need for the youth to embrace peace, tolerate each other, saying that the population of Nigeria remained the biggest resources for the country.

Also in an interview, Malama Ziliha Lawal, the NGO’s Coordinator in Kaduna State said the programme was meant to spur young people to start taking ownership of social accountability space.

“We want young people to hold government accountable, we want young people to accelerate sustainable development goals.

“Basically, the engagement on social accountability and transparency and also the SDGs.

“We choose to conduct the programme on campuses because we have young people on campuses who are the leaders of tomorrow.

“So, for us, it’s time to make these leaders get prepared, it’s time for these leaders to know that they are leaders of now and tomorrow, so let them start taking ownership of the action now.”

While observing that each young student comes from a community, Lawal said their mission was to empower marginalised communities.

She said the ultimate goal of the entire programme was to have young people talk and hold their government countable to their words and actions with a view to accelerating sustainable development goals.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the programme also featured students’ debate, poems, lecturers’ public discussion as well as questions and answers.