Officials of the Osun State Government from various Ministries, Departments and Agencies and members of the civil society organisations have been trained on the cardinal principles of Open Government Partnership with the aim of ensuring more citizens participation in governance of the state.
The stakeholders were trained during a three day capacity building held in Osogbo for state and non-state actors on the Open Government Partnership of which the state governor, Ademola Adeleke signed unto recently.
Centre LSD with the support of MacArthur Foundation under the Project Promoting Transparency and Accountability in Governance Process through the OGP in Nigeria, Project II.
Speaking at the programme, Lawal Amodu, the Programme Coordinator for Centre LSD, said the formulation of State Action Plan by both government officials, CSOs and media practitioners would make dividends of democracy to be made more available to citizens in a transparent and accountable process.
He said, “It is expedient to state that Nigeria signed into the OGP in 2016 under the President Muhammadu Buhari regime. Since then, states have signed into the OGP. I can tell you that Osun is the 26th state that has signed onto the OGP.
“What it means to sign onto the OGP is that Osun State, just as Nigeria as a whole, has signed into the principles of OGP. The principles include transparency, accountability, citizens’ engagement, technology and innovation. These are the four cardinal principles of the OGP. But, beyond that, what they have signed unto is to say we have agreed to work with civil societies and with citizens, to get their voice into governance processes, which is the missing link in the transparency and accountability that Nigeria has struggled with ages past.
“The difference is bringing people around the table to discuss challenges of governance and how to surmount these challenges of governance.
“Osun has agreed to abide by other low co-creation that the GOP seeks to project. We have agreed to do that. Now that we have agreed, it is important that there are civil society organisations that have gotten funding from MacArthur Foundation since 2018 to engage the OGP process in Nigeria and at the sub-national level.
“We need to also help Osun to build the capacity of state actors, which are government, non-state actors, which are civil societies and equip them with knowledge of OGP principles and what they stand for so that they can be strengthened to understand how the process of OGP runs.
“We also want to see how we can develop the State Action Plan for Osun. How we can facilitate the development of that State Action Plan because the SAP is the key in which Osun implementation of the OGP stands on. Our own goal is to provide guidance. We say what is the development agenda of the current governor? How do they intend to achieve it? Can we use the OGP state action plan to facilitate the achievement of the OGP process which the state has signed unto.
“We are also here to provide guide for Osun State actors and non-state actors to elect, for civil societies, they do elections, for government, they nominate members of the Steering Committee members, Technical Thematic Working Group members and OGP Open Government Partnership administrative structures that will provide leadership to the implementation of OGP in the state.”
On the benefits of the partnership, Amodu said, “The benefits are that once all of these lectures and trainings which we have given to civil societies and government officials about understanding their roles in the OGP and in the state Action Plan, it will allow government to be open because civil societies will be involved in the table to discuss governance. What it would then do is that it would give voice to citizens whom civil societies represent at such fora. It will give voice to the people in the things that the government is doing. So, the government won’t be misapplying or misappropriating projects. Projects will be sited where they are needed the most.
“It will help the government to see things from other perspectives, to see that civil societies can make serious contributions to governance processes and once they do that, service delivery becomes a bit easier. So, they would know where to place things at the right time.
“Other benefits are that donor agencies will discover transparency, openness and accountability in what government is doing and then say, oh, Osun State is showing signals of being transparent and accountable and carrying citizens along, of applying technology and innovation to its work by placing the budgets on the internet, by placing information on the internet for everybody to access.
“If Osun is doing all these principles and we put our money as donor community or donor international organizations, and the state is practising transparency and accountability, citizens engagement and application of technology and innovation, we would have been assured that our money will.not be lost. So, what we are assured of, we can put money and invest in the state and into capacity building for the state to be able to deliver on services and help the government to become stronger.
“There are a gamut of benefits that will come to the citizens. How do we manage our natural resources and invest in education, health, water, electricity and so on.”
In his remarks, Uchenna Arisukwu, Civil Society Advisor at the Open Government Partnership National Secretariat, Abuja, said, “OGP will provide the governor with that platform to effectively implement his five points agenda and also to increase developmental efforts in the state while working in close partnership with civil societies so that at the end of the day, everybody is a beneficiary because OGP’s target is that citizens are well served and that government ad CSO collaborate and co-create to deliver public goods and services to the people.”
Michael Ebofin, Coordinator of Open Government Partnership Network of NGOs in Osun State said, “Governance is not a war-war thing, it is now jaw-jaw and we have to partner, dialogue, engage to move the state and the nation forward. OGP will make the society grow better because the state will have the opportunity of requesting from donor agencies to fund projects in the state. That is what former governor Nasir El Rufai enjoyed during his administration in Kaduna. Because he signed into Open Government Partnership long ago, all the development that you saw him having in Kaduna were being sponsored by donor agencies because they saw he already keyed into OGP. They saw that the transparency, accountability is there because of the good financial reportage after any money might have been given to him.
“Engaging civil societies in budgeting will facilitate more development in the state.”
