Civil Society Organizations have charged state actors in all the six states of the South West region to adopt the bottom-top approach in planning, budget and policy process.
The CSOs, which consist of networks and coalitions of CSOs in all the six states in the South West, made the call during the 2018 South-West Partners’ Reflection Session organized by Partnership to Engage Reform and Learn, a DFID program.
The session featured discussions around the challenges different citizens group face in engaging the government and citizens in planning, budget, policy process and service delivery.
Michael Ebofin, CEO of Mowalek Centre for Sustainable Community Development from Osun State noted that it is of essence that the government ensure an inclusive budget process which would be favourable to the diverse citizen’s group.
The representative from Ogun State, Adeshola Afariogun, Executive Director of African Foundation for Environment and Development, AFED, maintained that the Ogun state government has been responsive and engaging the CSOs in the policy process and budget planning which has given an opportunity for inclusion in the budget process.
Afariogun expressed that in engaging citizens to ensure their issues and needs reflected in the budget, CSOs have been meeting with a diverse citizens group to ensure their issues of interest are captured in the budget.
“We have a running project titled, “Empowering citizens to engage in governance” this project creates a tripartite partnership between the Legislature, Media and the CSOs in Ado-Odo/Ota local government of Ogun State”, he explained
Afariogun, however, requested that the Ogun State Government sign the Open Government Partnership which he believes would further enhance a robust relationship between the Public sector and citizens group.
Deji Adeyemo, Deputy Clerk of the Ogun State House of Assembly also said funding has been a major challenge in engaging all sectors in the state during the budget process.
He urged the executive to involve all stakeholders in budget planning, that is done in Ogun State but it might not be as expected due to funding.
“Budget presentation process has to be conducted at the ward level, local government and state level, since this cannot be achieved, we have an initiative to centralize it and we have representatives from several areas of the state to have their inputs in the budget”
Adeyemo who noted that the centralized process hinders many groups to have their needs captured in the budget stated that the Ogun State government would devise a means to address it and ensure effective engagement of all stakeholders in Planning, budget and policy process.
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