Godwin Tsa, Abuja
The Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami (SAN), has disclosed that the looted fund recovered by the Federal Government within the last three years was used to partly finance its annual budget.
Malami who made the disclosure during a stakeholders’ validation retreat to finalise the second Nigeria Open Government Partnership (OGP), National Action Plan, said the Federal Government had intensified its anti-corruption war by approving the harmonised National Anti-Corruption Strategy.
While appraising the successes during the first leg of the programme, Malami explained that the Asset Recovery and Management Unit in the Federal Ministry of Justice serves as the secretariat responsible for the implementation of NACS.
He stated that that high-level transparency in asset recovery had been achieved by the Federal Government in the last three years.
He said “With respect to the commitment under anti-corruption thematic, the Federal Government has approved the harmonised NACS.
He noted Greater transparency in asset recovery has been recorded in the past three years and these have been applied towards the implementation of Nigeria’s annual budget as well as in social investment for the poor.”
Flowing from the President’s commitment at the Anti-Corruption Summit, Nigeria joined the Open Government Partnership in July 2016 as a tool to foster transparency and accountability through targeted measures.
The minister recalled that while joining OGP, Nigeria committed to promoting fiscal transparency, improve public procurement and open contracting, access to information, asset disclosure, citizen engagement and empowerment thereby consolidating on-going reform efforts within and outside the public service.
“In order to ensure proper coordination of OGP, the President named the Federal Ministry of Justice as the coordinating Ministry for the implementation of OGP and as such, the Secretariat was located in the Ministry to act as the coordinating Ministry.
“The Ministry has played that role effectively in the past two years and would continue to do so unless otherwise directed by the President. You will agree with me that it was not too long ago when stakeholders gathered in Kaduna, precisely, in October 2016 to validate the 1st National Action Plan that spanned through January 2017 to June 2019.
The first National Action Plan, Malami explained, had 14 commitments that were hinged on Fiscal Transparency, Access to Information, Anti-Corruption and Citizens Engagement.
He listed some of the progress so far recorded made so far to include Open Budget, the Budget Office of the Federation through consultative process with relevant government agencies and citizens published the Pre-Budget Statement (2018-2020 MTEF/FSP) and has consistently published a Citizen’s Guide to the Budget since 2018.
The AGF further disclosed that the programme has also developed the iMonitor platform for citizens’ feedback to government with respect to implementation of projects within communities.
To citizens engaged in governments’ processes, the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) developed the Nigerian Open Contracting Portal (NOCOPO). This made the BPP to win the Government Innovation Award in a competition organized by the Washington, DC-based Open Contracting Partnership and the London-based Open Data Institute. Currently eight Pilot MDAs namely the Federal Ministry of Education, Health, Transport, Agriculture, Works and Petroleum Resources are spearheading the use of this Portal. The Bureau has trained these Agencies on how to upload data on the portal.
