By Daniel Tyokua
The Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) said it has reached the peak of good governance action plan.
This followed the joining of global Open Government Partnership (OGP) local in 2020 that fulfil all that is involved in making the exercise achievable.
In an official report by the Special Adviser to AMAC chairman, Abiodun Essiet and the Desk Officer for OGP, said AMAC became the third government institution and the first Local Government in Nigeria to join the OGP global platform to build and all inclusive governance, which includes allowing women, marginal groups, vulnerable people contribute to the development of the council.
AMAC also kicked off her OGP process by harnessing her existing partnership with government ministries, civil societies and community groups to create an action plan that will contain concrete reforms for development, and accountability.
She said of the four OGP thematic dimensions, fiscal transparency, access to information, public disclosure of assets and citizen engagement, AMAC decided to focus on citizen’s engagement as her maiden action plan commitment.
According to her, the objective of the commitment is to improve citizen’s engagement and participation in the budgetary process, which has ensured that information about the budgetary process is made available to citizens in an accessible and timely manner, and citizens were able to make inputs across the budget cycle.
She added that the specific OGP challenges addressed by the commitment are: low citizen’s engagement, inadequate transparency and accountability mechanism around the budget process.
“With support from partner NGOs: Centre LSD, Action Aid Nigeria, BudgIt Nigeria, DEAN Initiative and OGP
Secretariat, citizens’ engagement activities were drawn.
“Town hall meetings were held by AMAC at ward levels to sensitise and educate citizens on their budget process and that resulted into the creation of budget calendar and its publication; and the final ward town hall meetings were held for collection of community needs for the budget.
“This entire process gave birth the first ever AMAC citizens budget; and the 2022 approved AMAC budget captured priority projects listed by the communities during ward level community needs town hall meetings for budget process. Special thanks to our OGP Local CSO partner; DEAN Initiative and all our action plan partners: Centre LSD, Action Aid Nigeria, BudgIt Nigeria, DEAN Initiative, CISLAC and OGP Secretariat”, she stressed.
