Bala Usman, Yemi-Esan, Akabueze Brainstorm on Citizens’ Engagement, Policy Reforms in Nigeria

•UK-funded PERL initiative wraps up after 8 years in Nigeria

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Policy and Coordination and Head of Central Delivery Coordination Unit, Hadiza Bala Usman; ex-Head of Service of the Federation (HoSF), Folashade Yemi-Esan and immediate past head of the Budget office, Ben Akabueze were part of a panel yesterday that discussed ways to enhance government-citizen engagement in the country.

The three spoke during an ‘exit and dissemination’ programme in Abuja for the Partnership to Engage Reform and Learn (PERL), a public-sector accountability and governance programme funded by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the UK.

Other prominent Nigerians who sat on the panel anchored by a former Director General, Bureau of Public Sector Reforms (BPSR), Dr Joe Abah, were Dr Otive Igbuzor, ex-Chief of Staff to former Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege; Chief Executive, Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG), Tayo Aduloju, among others.

The programme which was launched in 2016  aimed to improve collaboration between governments and citizens to tackle governance challenges and improve service delivery.

It worked in seven locations across Nigeria, including at the federal level and in states like Kano, Kaduna, and Jigawa and also maintained a South-West regional hub with an office in Lagos to cover Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo and Ekiti states.

It also maintained a regional hub office in Enugu covering Enugu, Abia, Imo, Ebonyi and Anambra states as well as the North-East regional hub comprising Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.

Speaking at the event, the erstwhile HoSF, Yemi-Esan, stated that the challenges of reforms were the same everywhere, pinpointing people’s mindset as a major problem.

“I think the biggest challenge we have when we are driving reforms is the mindset and the resistance to change. Once you are used to a certain method, a certain way of doing things, a new method comes in and we are not ready to even give that new method an opportunity.

“We want to tear it down, we want to pull it down immediately. So I think that might be the biggest challenge. There are several other challenges, but the one that has to do with the mind, I think, is the one that is the biggest and the one that we need to tackle the most,” she pointed out.

Other challenges, she said, included funding of the processes, shared missions, political buy-in to the reform processes and the know-how.

In her intervention, presidential aide, Hadiza Bala Usman, stressed that recognising the need of capturing marginalised groups, the Bola Tinubu-led government has approved quarterly stakeholders meetings.

She explained that there was the need for continued engagement recognising  all the relevant stakeholder groups within a cluster, stressing that it was part of what was being assessed with current ministers.

She added that the citizen delivery tracker deployed by the government was also a tool that the Central Reserve Delivery Unit launched last year to enable citizens to participate in governance.

According to her, the platform ensures transparency and accountability, allowing citizens to comment on the government’s performance and contribute to improving service delivery.

The Open Government Partnership (OGP), she stressed, is also another key driver of citizen engagement, providing structures for governance to engage with citizens and facilitate dialogue.

Also speaking, Ben Akabueze, the former head of Nigeria’s budget office said there was the need to review constitutional provisions regarding the budget in Nigeria, which he said  are very vague.

“We need to know where the lines fall between the executive and the legislature. And that’s why we see that it’s been a constant source of friction at both levels. And ultimately what happens is a lot of compromise.

“The budgets that we have are mostly matters of compromise, rather than  reflecting the ideal that it should,” he argued.

In her remarks at the event, the FCDO Development Director of the British High Commission in Nigeria, Cynthia Rowe, emphasised Nigeria’s pivotal role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), stating that the world cannot meet the goals without Nigeria’s success.

Rowe highlighted the remarkable results achieved through the partnership over the past eight years, including increased citizen participation in public resource allocation in Kano, Kaduna, and Jigawa.

She added that two out of three FCDO focus states were rated as the most transparent by the Nigeria sub-national budget transparency survey and the World Bank fiscal transparency programme.

The National Programme Manager for the PERL-ARC (Accountable, Responsible and Governance Pillar), Peter Ugwuoke, said the programme focused on governance systems, public policy, finance, and administration.