From Sola Ojo, Kaduna
In an effort to reduce corrupt practices and increase citizens’ involvement in public expenditures in the state, a Kaduna-based NGO, Legal Awareness for Nigerian Women (LANW), on Thursday trained representatives of 35 Kaduna communities on project tracking and monitoring.
The 35 communities which were selected from Kaura, Soba and Chikun are to be added to earlier trained 65 communities from the same local government areas as a strategy for formidable responsive and responsible citizens who can hold the government to account in terms of public procurements.
On the sidelines of the one-day training held at a hotel in Kaduna, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, LANW, Sunbo Shobayo, told reporters that her organisation was currently implementing Strengthening Accountability and Transparency in Nigeria’s Public Sector (STATNES) supported by MacArthur Foundation.
According to her, ‘these are a new set of communities we have not to work with before but, they are from the same local governments with those we had trained earlier which are Kaura, Soba and Chikun.
‘We are trying to reach all the communities in these three vocal local government areas. So, it is like scaling up what we have been doing.
‘Today, we are here to equip these set of communities with the skills needed to effectively monitor public projects in their various communities and these skills include understanding the Bill of Quantity (BoQ), Community Development Charter (CDC), budget and budget cycle and feedback mechanisms such as eyes and ears among other.
‘At the end of the day, what we want to see is that they own the public projects such as schools, health facilities, rural water facilities etc and monitor those projects for effectively in such a way that it will reduce corrupt practices in public procurements for a better Kaduna State.
‘With these 35 communities, we would have trained 100 communities in addition to the 65 communities we trained earlier in this regard,’ she said.