By Gabriel Ewepu and Fortune Eromosele

A non-partisan, non-governmental organisation, ActionAid Nigeria, AAN, and the Abuja Municipal Area Council, AMAC, yesterday, called for citizens’ participation in the budgeting process.

The duo made the call at an AMAC town hall meeting on participatory budgeting in Zone A of AMAC, which includes Karshi wards, Orozo wards, karu wards and Nyanya wards.

Addressing newsmen, Manager, Partnership and Local Rights Programme, AAN, Sani Ibrahim, said the sensitization programme, is to gather stakeholders of communities situated in AMAC to make their opinions added to the budgetary process.

He noted that the process will ensure budget is not only exclusive but inclusive, adding that the exercise is to make the budgetary process participatory, where the real and basic needs of citizens are captured in the budget.

He however called on AMAC to ensure the process is institutionalised and made continuous, to ensure citizens’ needs are captured in the budget. This, he explained will foster national growth and development.

He further called on the federal government to ensure all budgets are participatory, transparent and very open to make citizens participate and not only citizens, including representatives of civil society organisations.

He said: “We are trying to see how we can engage various communities and wards that are in AMAC to make their input into the 2022 budget. The exercise is to make the whole budgetary process participatory, where the real and basic needs of citizens are captured into the budget and we know budget is one of the key instruments that helps to develop our citizens and their communities.

“It is a two way benefit; one to the community, and two to the government in terms of managing their scarce resources.

“For us this process, one is not only participatory, it is sustainable, because whatever issues the community brings into the budget, they will monitor it and ensure that government including the local government implements it.

“And they also ensure that whatever the local government implements, they also ensure that they maintain and take care of those projects or infrastructures that are implemented in their community.”

Meanwhile, the Special Adviser to the Chairman of Abuja Municipal Area Council, AMAC, on Information Communication Technology and Civil Society Organisations, Abiodun Essiet, promised that AMAC as part of its membership on the Global Platform Open Governance Partnership, will ensure and carry out its mandate on making budgetary processes participatory and transparent.

According to Essiet, AMAC will not go back on its action plans to execute a platform where citizens can freely participate and make inputs in the budget on issues that concern their various communities.

“That’s why we have called out necessary stakeholders for each zones to come out and deliberate on their priorities and their needs.

“It is a step in the right direction for government to look into participatory budgeting not just making budget for the community but for the community to come up with their needs and ask the government to capture their needs in the budget.

“We say we are practicing democracy but how are the citizens able to discern how the government is being run, so it is a government of the people by the people and for the people. So the people should be able to decide how and what they want for their community.

“This is a call to other local governments in Nigeria to also join the train and be part of open governance partnership to promote citizens’ accountability and transparency in their processes and ensuring that citizens are at the forefront of the chain and development in their councils”, she stated.