From Sola Ojo, Kaduna
An organisation, Connected Development (CODE), said it has secured the support of the leadership of the 23 local government areas of Kaduna State as it tracks N6.4 billion federal constituency projects in the state, which are contained in the 2020 and 2021 federal budgets.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CODE, Hamzat Lawal told journalists after meeting with the leadership of the local governments that the partnership became necessary to ease his team’s tracking of the federal projects spread across the state. According to him, the partnership was coming through CODE’s social accountability initiative; ‘Follow The Money’ designed to ensure effective implementation of people-oriented projects for which public funds have been budgeted.
“The National Assembly recently voted in favour of local government autonomy. So there is a need to ensure that beyond the legal and regulatory framework, CODE moves ahead to ensure effective implementation of the local government autonomy to ensure resources are directly put into their accounts.
“So, CODE will in collaboration with the 23 local government chairmen be setting the pace to initiate reforms that will promote government transparency, accountability and citizens’ participation in the local government budgeting system.
Commissioner, Ministry for Local Government and Chieftaincy, Shehu Usman Muhammad, who spoke earlier, remarked that his ministry was ready to work with accountability partners to track the effectiveness of project implementation at local government levels where transparency could further be enhanced within grassroots communities.