Lack of active participation of citizens in tracking the implementation processes of national and state budgets with a view to ensure accountability and transparency has been blamed for the proliferation of abandoned projects across the country in the last 20 years of Nigerian democracy experience.
The Head Tracka, BudgIT, Mr. Uadamen Ilevbaoje, stated this on Thursday at a sensitization workshop organized for civil society organisations by the Inter-faith Network Against Corruption (INAC) in collaboration with MacArthur Foundation and Aminu Kano Centre for Democratic studies, Bayero University Kano.
He averred that citizens’ passive attitudes towards governance has also made corruption to thrive among the government officials who see the projects they are implementing as a favour to the people they represent.
He urged the civil society, community based as well as religious organizations to intensify sensitization with a view to galvanizing active citizens’ engagement in tracking and monitoring of government projects being executed in their respective localities.
“For us to improve on budget implementation, we have to consider citizens participation as a key. There is low level of citizens’ participation in our budget process that is why citizens’ needs are not captured in the budget. If you look at our national budget there is no any provision for empowerment.”
”There is this belief that projects that are being implemented in the budget are being financed by those we elected into public offices that’s why we are not following up the projects, that is why we have a lot of abandoned projects and the few ones that are being implemented they are poorly done and most of them are being overpriced” he argued.
One of facilitators, Professor Mukhtar Haliru from the Department of Business Administration, Bayero University Kano, called for reorientation of Nigerian public to be able to key in the fight against corruption.
According to him, “The government on its own cannot fight corruption alone, there is a general feeling that the value system in our society that has gone very bad because we tend to worship people who have wealth regardless of their source of wealth”
