Rep urges donor agencies to publish funding for projects

A Member of the House of Representatives, Mike Etaba (PDP, Cross River), has called on major donor agencies funding projects and programmes to publish the funds they are committing to the projects for transparency and accountability.

Etaba, who is the Chairman of the Committee on Legislative Budget and Research, made the call over the weekend during an audience with a United Kingdom-based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Publish-What-YouFund.

He said if donor agencies like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), and the African Development Bank (AfDB) published what they were donating, it would help in measuring the impacts of assistance from donor agencies in the country.

He said the call became imperative as the impact of the various assistance programmes from international donor agencies was hardly felt at the grassroots where the majority of the Nigerian masses lived.

He also called on the development partners to support the proposed “National Assembly Budget and Research Office (NABRO) Establishment Bill” which is before the National Assembly, which he said was aimed at sanitising operations of the donor agencies.

Speaking earlier, the Chief Executive Officer of Publish-What-YouFund, Gary Forster, said his organisation envisaged a world where aid and development information were transparent, available and used for effective decision making, public accountability and lasting change for all citizens.

The team was led to the meeting by Mr. Henry Asor and Mrs. Idahor Caren Tony, both of who are senior officials from the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, while Mr. Gary Forster was accompanied to the meeting by Mr. Alex Tilley, Research Manager at the Publish-WhatYou-Fund.