A call has gone to the Kwara State Governor, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, to ensure full operationalisation of the State Public Procurement Law by inaugurating the Procurement Council and energise the State Public Procurement Agency for effective implementation of the new procurement regime in the state.
The call was made in a communique issued after stakeholders’ consultative meeting on Citizens’ Accountability Report (CAR), on the 2020 audited financial statement of Kwara State Government convened By Grassroots Development Monitoring and advocacy Centre (GDMAC).
It stated that the GDMAC with the support of the MacArthur Foundation,
convened a strategic Stakeholders’ Consultative Review Meeting (SCRM) on the maiden Citizens’ Accountability Report (CAR) on the 2020 Audited Financial Statement (AFS) of Kwara State Government of Nigeria at the Multipurpose Hall of Radio Kwara Ilorin on October 4, 2021.
Premised on the need to ensure that every One Naira of Kwara State Money is spent prudently to achieve value for money and better budget outcome for the people, the SCRM provided a platform for civic groups to review the CAR and co-create strategies to block leakages and loopholes in the management of public resources in Kwara State.
Participants at the meeting included CSO, students, Officials of the State Auditor-General, Kwara State led by State Auditor-General (SAG), Adeyeye Omoniyi Samuel among others at the meeting observed that every citizen has the right to know how the public funds are being expended in the delivery of public infrastructure and services.
The communique made available to our correspondent by Yinka Razaq, GDMAC Program, M&E Adviser, reads, “The introduction of Citizens Accountability Report (CAR) is a useful mechanism to demystify public sector “audit as a closed affair that hardly attracts public attention”. This is premised on the fact that audit reports are bulky, running into scores of pages and the details of which are often buried in dense technical hidden away from the public.
“In spite of noticeable shift towards making the State’s budgeting process transparent and participatory, via mechanisms such as budget town hall, citizen budget, and social audit, the budgeting process in Kwara State is still not very much sufficiently participatory, particularly at midstream procurement tendering process, and budget execution, monitoring, and evaluation, as well as audit stages.
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“The following resolutions were made as recommendations: Since every citizen has a right to know how his/her commonwealth is being expended in the delivery of public infrastructure and services, the State government must continue to ensure that the people have a good understanding of how actual expenditure is spent through deepening reforms of the state fiscal governance ecosystem including the full operationalization of both the Kwara State Public Procurement Law and the newly enacted Kwara State Public Audit Law (No. 4 of 2021) respectively.
“Kwara State Government is strongly encouraged to continue to produce the CAR beyond the World Bank’s disbursement linked indicator (DLI) bearing in mind that the Annual Performance Assessment (APA) of States’ Fiscal Transparency, Accountability, and Sustainability (SFTAS) programme would soon come to an end by 2022. A CAR is a series of graphical and or tabular illustrations of the contents of AFS to the citizens to ensure accountability of public funds.
“We call on the Kwara State Governor, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, to conduct a thorough procurement corruption risk assessment of all Ministers’ Department and Agencies (MDA’s), including the Governor’s Office.
“Also, there is a need to strengthening MDAs’ internal audit department or unit and sanction accounting officers that frequently delays in responses to audit queries. More importantly, a multi stakeholders’ validation process is needed in the spirit of co-creation to ensure accountability of affected MDAs with regards to the utilization of entrusted public funds.
“As a default, both the State Auditor-General and the PAC of Kwara State House of Assembly should establish innovative mechanisms to involve members of the public in the audit process through an invitation to public and investigative hearings.
“The CSOs are urged to sustain robust engagements across the entire PFM (fiscal governance) value chain in the state.
Signatories.”
Grassroots Development Monitoring and Advocacy Centre (GDMAC), is a registered non-partisan, NGO dedicated to ensuring good governance.
