By Precious Oham
A group, Environmental Development and Family Health Organization, EDFHO, in collaboration with ActionAid Nigeria has trained Civil Society Organizations in Ekiti State on budget monitoring, tracking and advocacy.
The two-day ‘Roundtable Meeting on Budget Tracking’ which had in attendance CSOs, representatives of ActionAid Nigeria, among other stakeholders began on Tuesday in Ado-Ekiti
In his opening remark, the Executive Director of EDFHO, Olu Ogunrotimi said that the overall objective of the training is to build the capacity of the CSOs and citizens to effectively engage with govt policy makers and budgetary processes for the development and implementation of favourable policies and budgets that meet the citizens and communities needs.
He equally noted that the training is aimed at developing strategies and strengthening the capacity of CSOs and citizens on budget monitoring, tracking and advocacy.
One of the Resource Persons, and Local Right Project Manager of ActionAid Nigeria, Kehinde Arowosegbe gave a lecture on ‘Economic Literacy and Budget Accountability for Governance.’
According to him, “citizens have the right to ask for the budget of Nigeria and Ekiti as long as you are an eligible voter. It’s your right to demand for accountability.
“There is need to hold government and its institutions accountable. As citizens of Ekiti State, we are supposed to participate in governance. When you build development from grassroots, it will get to the national level.”
He also delivered a lecture on ‘Education Financing in Nigeria’ where he explained that the country needs education for equality, stability and security.
He went further to identify some reasons why education is important in Ekiti State including; self-dependency, makes dreams come true, makes the world safe, gives one confidence, makes a citizen to be part of the society and provides economic growth on a national level.
“We need to let government know that we need to form regulations. Until we fix the issue of education, we will have problems. Government needs to invest in education because we are sitting on a time bomb. We are in trouble if we don’t fix education in Nigeria. Government should be interested in fixing education in Nigeria because it is going backward.
“One of the major problems now facing education is underfunding. We have in the last decades witnessed a gradual degradation in infrastructure, manpower development and access to qualitative education. Budget cannot be a sensitive document. It is something that everybody should sit down and discuss.”
The Executive Director of EDFHO, who delivered a lecture on “Public Budget and Budget Process” highlighted the processes to include; preparation, approval, monitoring and implementation.
He further explained the sources of revenue and expenditure to include, direct taxes, indirect taxes, grants and loans while there is recurrent and capital expenditure.
On the types of budget outputs, he outlined surplus, deficit and balanced budget, principles of budgeting, importance of budgeting, traditional functions of budget.
He pointed out that citizens of the State can participate in the budget process at the community level, shadow budgeting, use of mass media, budget monitoring and tracking, pubic hearing, formal and informal advocacy etc.
