From Austine Tule, Makurdi
The Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, has expressed readiness to partner Civil Society Steering Committee on Open Government Partnership (OGP) in the state to entrench good governance and accountability.
The Governor gave the commitment during a courtesy call at the Banquet Hall of Benue People’s House Makurdi, Monday.
He said good governance remains a key agenda of his administration and has been actively promoting same.
Ortom was optimistic that if the partnership is established and sustained, it will be a legacy that he will forever live to appreciate.
He hinted that already, his government is working on the Public Procurement Bill and the Fiscal Responsibility Bill for presentation to the State Assembly to be passed into law and called for input from civil society organisations.
Earlier in his speech, Rommy Mom Esq, Chairman of the Civil Society Steering Committee on OGP in Benue State said the visit was “to make a plea as citizens group in the state, for Benue State Government to sign up to the OGP and develop a sub national plan thereto.”
He described OGP as an international multi-stakeholder global coalition of reformers from government and civil society, working to make government transparent, accountable and participatory, to truly serve and empower citizens.
Mom named fundamental principles of OGP to include transparency, accountability, citizen participation, technology and innovation. “These principles are the bedrock for the establishment of OGP and it is increasingly serving as one of the cardinal frameworks in which a government is measured to determine how it engages citizens and how transparent it is,” he explained.
