To encourage accurate active citizens’ participation in governance and push for quality service delivery in Kogi State, stakeholders have advocated for sustained quarterly town hall meetings with Governor Ahmed Usman Ododo.
This is coming after Kogi NGO Network (KONGONET), a coalition of civil society networks championing participatory democracy and good governance recently inaugurated a Permanent Dialogue Mechanism (PDM) Committee called Kogi Accountability Platform (KAP).
The KAP’s mission is to push for good governance through a mutually co-created and agreed Key performance index to measure the government’s accountability on key campaign commitments.
According to a communique issued at a good governance roundtable recently organised by Stallion Times in Lokoja, Governor Ahmed Usman Ododo committed to organising townhall meetings during the 2023 November Governorship elections campaign, however, 1 year into the administration, there is no documented evidence of these meetings at the Local government and community levels.
The communique was jointly signed by the Chairman of KOGONET and Co-Chair of the non-state Actors of Kogi State Open Government Partnership (OGP), Amb. Idris Ozovehe Muraina, the Interim Chairman of KAP, Comrade Hamza Aliyu, and the Stallion Times Project Coordinator, Isiyaku Ahmed noted that as a sign of its transparency, accountability, and participatory focus, Kogi is among the league of states that have joined the global OGP initiative.
Other parts of the communique read;
“With increased openness and transparency in the management of resources, Kogi State, like other states, has witnessed increased investment and resource mobilisation (increased IGR) from slightly over N6.5 billion in 2016 to over N23.5 billion in 2023.
“The State Government has consistently opened its budget and other financial instruments from 2016 to 2024. This is commendable.
“Citizens engagement with government is still sub-optimal due to low awareness on the role of citizens in governance.
“Public sector infrastructure Service provision (water, education, health, Agriculture) to citizens has been below expectation and is often not targeting the most vulnerable beneficiaries due to weak data management. This is a key factor in the increasing poverty and poor economic growth.
“The limited meaningful inclusion of persons with disability in governance is manifest with the poor implementation of the disability office law which has led to the head of the office being a person without disability. This has negated the proposed gains from the 2019 state disability law.
In the communique, stakeholders at the governance roundtable recommended that;
“Townhall meetings with community members should be organised every quarter with the Ministry of Finance budget and Economic Planning, and the Ministry of Information and Communication and other relevant MDAs coordinating the process. And it would be more impactful if the Governor is present at the town hall meetings.
“Government should expand services in water, roads, electricity and agricultural input provision to citizens and these should be given priority in the budget formulation and implementation based on quality data.
“Citizens and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) must continue to engage consistently and strategically with government including the private sector for effective governance in the state. This can be achieved through effective capacity building and increased orientation.
“Governments and citizens (led by CSOs) in Kogi State must continue to engage using Permanent Dialogue Mechanisms (PDM) such as the Kogi Accountability Platform (KAP) and the Open Government Partnership (OGP) for improved accountability and transparency in governance.
“There is a need for improvement in the revenue generation capacity of the State from the current N23.5 Billion, to provide sustainable service provision and insulation from economic shocks.
“The amendment of the Disability Office Law to ensure that only qualified Persons with Disability heads the Office is crucial. This would give PWD an enhanced sense of belonging in the affairs that concern them.”
The round-table discussion on good governance is one of many activities in Year 3 of the 3-year participatory governance and media literacy project tagged “Get Involved, Dialogue and Improve (G-DRIP)” in Kano and Kogi states respectively.
It was supported by the Wole Soyinka Center for Investigative Journalism under the Collaborative Media Project and funded by the MacArthur Foundation.
