By Merit Ibe

In the bid to strengthen transparency and accountability in governments’ financial report across board, the Federal Government yesterday put up a workshop on Citizens Accountability Reporting (CAR) for states in the South East.

Speaking at the event,  organised by Open Government Partnership (OGP) under the World Bank-Assisted States Fiscal Transparency Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) Programme for Results, National coordinator of OGP, Dr Anne  Nzeogwu,  noted that the objective of the programme is for participants and states representatives to learn how to develop their individual state’s CAR using a  template developed by the OGP Secretariat in collaboration with Foreign Commonwealth Development Office-Partnership to Engage Reform and Learn (FCDO/PERL.)

The OGP is a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from national and sub-national governments to promote open government, empower citizens, fight corruption and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

The project was also meant to collect information from the participants on how to make the template more user-friendly.

She hoped that at the end of the day, participants would be able to  develop their CAR, and publish the report on the websites of their various states’ governments before the deadline of September 30, 2021.

Ralph Ndigwe, from Civil Resource Development and Document Centre (CiRDOC), Enugu, noted that the programme was necessary because lack of knowledge has deprived many with regards to fiscal governance in the past.

“The seminar will get the people involved to understand, how, what is done,” adding that contributing to governance will result in better programme and  performance.

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For Basil Bassey, Public Financial Management Facilitator for the UK-funded FCDO-PERL, who designed the template, noted that it is World Bank’s template which he assisted  to ensure that citizens see data that could be understood to remove the normal accounting jargons and whittle the information down to a meaningful standard.

“The CAR is to enable the government report their financial audited statement in a way that is understandable to the public; create avenue that will increase accountability and transparency  on the part of the government and to further help CSOs  and media to be able to understand the accounting process  and documents of government.

He said the report will enable citizens ask the right questions on how the public funds are being utilised.

“The template reveals information about government expenditure in a manner that is open, transparent and understandable.

“ CAR is just enabling them to have the right set of tools to be able to engage.”

 The OGP Programme  Manager, Andrew Onyeanakwe, said the project developed a template to enable  the states prepare and publish the CAR by Sept 30, adding that the essence of the workshop is to introduce the template to the states  and guide them on how to complete it so that their reports can be published meeting up the deadline.

“CAR states how the government has performed in the year report, so that citizens can access the report extracted from the audited statement of each state government.