JDPCI Tasks Edo State Govt. On LG Budget, Accountablility

JDPCI Tasks Edo State Govt. On LG Budget, Accountablility.

By Lucky Isibor.

The Executive Director of the Catholic Justice Development and Peace Caritas Initiatives, JDPCI Uromi Diocese, Rev. Fr. (Dr) Fidelis Arhedo has appealed to the Edo State Government to prevail on Local Government Councils in the State to be accountable to the people at the grassroots and disclose their budgets to members of the public proactively, just the same way the state government discloses its budget and even call for citizens input and critique before forwarding to the House of Assembly for appropriation.

The Catholic cleric also called on the Acting Chairmen across the Local Government Area Councils to always avail citizens of the Council's annual budget as it's a public document and deplored their excuses of urging those who want their budget to go to Benin City the state capital for such document.

Father Arhedo made the call while briefing newsmen at a stakeholders meeting to assess the implementation of the European Union's Agent for Citizen Driven Transformation, EU-ACT project titled "Community Mobilisation and Engagement for Transparency, Accountability and Sustainable Governance in Edo State financed by the European Union and implemented by the British Council in collaboration with the Uromi JDPCI.

Arhedo who noted that the goal of the intervention is to ensure improved community participation in governance for accountablility, transparency and effective service delivery, disclosed that the Uromi JDPCI is collaborating with civic groups in 25 communities in Edo Central Senatorial District in the project execution adding that their capacities have been built to enhance their abilities to engage their representatives at the local government level on budget tracking in line with the Open Government Partnership, OGP which Edo State Government signed into in 2018. 

He regretted that the recurring challenge reported by the civic groups across the five local government areas of Edo Central Senatorial District has been inability to access the Councils' annual budget and inaccessibility of some of the Acting Council Chairmen.

He therefore called on the Edo State government to direct the relevant officials of the Councils to disclose their annual budgets the way it's done at the state level where the state budget can be accessed online.

"The underlined issues reported by the civic groups which are seen as part of the challenges to good governance include the non-accessibility of some Local Government acting chairmen who have proven very difficult to be seen despite several meeting appointments initiated by the Civic Group Coalition of such LGA to the office. 

"Another is the inability of the Community Civic Groups to access their LGA budget which hinders their participation in governance as they are not able to monitor project executions in their communities since they do not even know what is contained in the budget.

"The State Government has taken a good step with the institution of the citizens' budget. We would therefore call on the Governor to direct the Local Government Authorities to adopt the same process to develop citizens' budgets at the various LGAs for community participation and involvement in governance.

"Let the state government conduct local government election so that we'll have executive local government chairmen and they'll owe us the responsibility to explain to us. Edo people are wise, they know who to vote for. Governor Obaseki is our Governor today because Edo people want him to be our Governor. The people at the local communities are also wise and they know who to vote for at the local government level. If we want to see the chairmen and we cannot meet them in the office, we'll meet them at home; if we cannot meet them at home, we'll go to them where they stay in Benin or Lagos."

While thanking the British Council for its mentorship and initiation of the Agent for Citizens Driven Transformation (EU-ACT) programme, Rev. Fr. Arhedo enumerated the outcome of the project in the last nine months.

"In the course of implementation of this intervention in the past nine months, some of the groups through their engagement with the post primary education board saw the posting of teachers to their community secondary school which had no teachers. Some other groups were working tirelessly to draw the attention of their representatives to the bad roads, drainages and dilapidated nature of their community schools with some of the representatives already making commitments to act."

In his report of the engagement of his group, Wilson Imharalu pointed out that the acting chairmen they engaged told them in unmistakable terms that they were mandated by government to pay salaries and not to engage in community development projects adding that they're even finding it difficult to pay salaries.

Imharalu deplored the lack of basic amenities in public facilities of the Councils adding that the markets lack toilets and water, and called on the Edo State government to direct the acting chairmen to provide basic facilities in public places like markets.

Also presenting her report, Dr. Mrs Esther Ebhota noted that they directed the attention of the authorities of Esan West to a delapidating health centre in the area and pointed out that the acting chairman of the Council sent officials to assess the work to be done, made estimates for same and sent to government for approval. She added that the acting chairman said they'll act once government gives approval.

Other members of the Civic Coalition Groups spoke in the same vain, called for conduct of local government elections so as to be able to engage their representatives.

Attempts to reach some of the acting Chairmen to react on why they are not accessible to the people failed. However, one of them said they can't talk to the press as they're civil servants, but spoke to us on condition of anonymity saying that they were mandated to pay salaries alone, adding that they cannot act on their own as they're not elected chairmen, but civil servants.