Yobe Assembly committed to open governance, transparency -Speaker

The Speaker Yobe State House of Assembly, Ahmed Lawan Mirwa, has said that the assembly was committed to open governance and transparency to enable people and residence of the reap the dividends of democracy.

Mirwa gave the pledge Thursday in Abuja at a round-table organised by Connected Development (CODE) under its Open Parley Nigeria project.

• Yobe implements 10% reduction in taxes
• CODE, Christian Aid launch N14m national youth development fund

The event among others was to entrench citizens participation and democratic principles as strong pillars on separation of power and non-interference of the Executive or Judiciary arms of government.

It was also to discuss strengthening accountability and transparency at the sub-national level.

According to Lawan, the assembly understands that to get people more involved and understand the legislative process and procedure citizens are expected to come closer to their legislatures.

“However, that cannot happen if people don’t attend House proceedings and acquaint themselves with the oversight procedures necessary for them to support the implementation of government policies and programmes.

“It is worth mentioning here that to ensure transparency the House of Assembly has one of the oldest Civil Society Organizations Liaison Desk Office in the Country which cushion and simplify citizens engagement with their representative legislatures.

“This has helped tremendously by bringing Members of the House closer to their respective constituents creating citizens and legislature mutual relationship,” Lawan said.

He said that despite these numerous reforms, the Yobe House was worried with citizens weak understanding of the role of legislature and constructive engagement for development.

He said that the CODE’s intervention and support the trend would be changed for better to a good synergy between citizens and the legislature leading to the needed implementation of budget and government policies for good governance.

On his part, Mallam Hamzat Lawal, the Chief Executive of Connected Development (CODE), said that the organisation was engaging the lawmakers at the sub-national level in four states of Oyo, Kwara, Kaduna and Yobe.

Lawal said that the aim was to entrench citizens participation and democratic principles as strong pillars on separation of power and non-interference of the Executive or Judiciary arms of government.

He said that the Open Parley Nigeria led by CODE was currently engaging with Yobe State House of Assembly members to discussion how to strengthen accountability and transparency at the sub-national.

He said, “The aim is to increase citizen awareness on parliamentary functions, proceedings, and open government benefits.

“The round-table will serve as a platform to build capacity of lawmakers to engage citizens and community-based organisations as well as create avenues where communities can begin to track, monitor, and document state house assembly performances.”

Lawal said that the session would also serve as a precursor to kick-start conversations around developing an autonomous legislative arm of the government that is equally accountable to the people.

Lawal said that Yobe is an important state in the North East and the State’s House of Assembly had done so much, particularly in the open budget processes.

He said, “We believe that we can scale and build on that, the lawmakers always go back to their constituencies and host a lot of town hall meetings, engaging their constituents.

“We want to be able to accelerate and scale on that, whereby we would ensure that as plenaries are ongoing, we use traditional means and even technology to amplify what is happening.”