‘FOI Act Should Be Exploited for Effective Budget Monitoring’

The Director General, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Dr. Garuba Abari, has said that effective budget monitoring can only be achieved if Nigerians take advantage of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act.

Abari made the remark in Abuja while playing host to a delegation from African Centre for Leadership, the Centre, Strategy and Development (Centre LSD), led by its Executive Director, Dr. Otive Igbuzor in his office in Abuja.

The team had visited to seek partnership with the agency on the implementation of Open Government Partnership (OGP) process in Nigeria.

The Director General said that the partnership with the Centre was a welcome development, noting that the agency was committed to the objectives 12, 13 and 14 of the OGP process.

According to him, “Recently, I was in Jos at the National Council for information. We came and presented a memo on how we will drive the OGP programme to the States and Local governments and all the Commissioners of Information adopted our memo. We are going to be working with them very closely at the State level and this will dovetail down to the local government level.”

He added that the agency has so many platforms it could deploy to engage the citizens.

He stated: “The local government assembly is one of the platform we are using. The local government assembly is an assembly that we convene at the local government level where we bring the local government establishment, we bring the labour organisations available, the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the village Heads, CSOs, youth group among others, we bring together to engage directly about government policies and programmes.”

Abari expressed worry that the local government system has completely collapsed due to the concentration of power at the state level. “For example, we discovered during the local government assembly that for little things like cleaning of the drainages, people talk about the governor, that tells you that local government has completely collapsed at the local level, the emphasis is on the governor. The control of power at the state level to the total exclusion of a government is constitutionally recognised. “The use of FOI Acts is very key, but unfortunately citizens do not seem to know how very powerful such an instrument is in their hands. You cannot do effective budget monitoring without understanding what powers the FOI Act has,” the DG said. Earlier, Igbuzor said in line with the anti-corruption position of the government, and in order to promote transparency and accountability, Nigeria joined other countries across the world to sign the OGP.

The Executive Director described the OGP approach as unique, saying there were three key areas about co-creation, which include; dissemination of information; spaces and platform for dialogue and cocreation; co-ownership and joint decision making. He explained that some of the commitments focus on citizens’ engagement, and these include; commitments 12, 13 and 14. He stressed that while there are lead agencies for the implementation of some of the commitments, NOA is the Lead agency for commitments 12, 13 and 14.