By Ijendu Iheaka
December 14, 2015
Ugwunagbo local government workers in Abia have called on the state government to revive participatory budgeting to improve accountability and to meet the real needs of the people.
The workers made the call at the council headquarters in Ugwunagbo on Wednesday during a Women Aid Collective (WACOL) Voice to the People (V2P) project meeting.
They said that side-stepping participatory budgeting was hurting accountability and reducing project performance and service to the people by the various governments.
Citing Ohanku village which had four health centres, the workers also said participatory budgeting would ensure projects were not duplicated in a particular locality to the detriment of others.
An official of the budget, research and planning department, Mr Ezechi Nwankpa, said that there was a 100 per cent need to include the people in the budgeting process if budgets must serve them.
He noted that participatory budgeting had been jettisoned for some time by the past governments to the detriment of the communities.
Also speaking, Dr Felix Ahuchama of the social development department regretted that the politicians avoided the people in governance processes to avoid accountability to them.
“Participation cannot work without telling the people what things mean and what is involved.
“People are denied participation so that they would not know what to ask for and so that the leaders would not be held accountable,” he said.
He urged governments to encourage the full participation of the people in governance processes to ensure the system created a pathway to accountability and produce the expected results.
The Chief of Staff to the transitional Chairman of Ugwunagbo, Mr Monday Achibiri, noted that local government elections planned for Abia would help revive participatory budgeting.
Achibiri said it would also ensure that councillors held town-hall meetings in all their wards and present their findings at council meetings for desired outcomes.
Another official of the social development department, Mr Kalu Obuba, said that enthroning inclusive democratic processes which involves participatory budgeting would aid accountability.
He called on all the tiers of government to fight corruption harder to achieve accountability and give the people the results they wanted.
The Senior Programme Officer of WACOL, Mrs Anulika Ezennia, said the V2 P project was a good governance project supporting communities to take ownership of their development.
Ezennia said that the project in its pilot stage was being implemented in Enugu, Imo and Abia states, with Ugwunagbo and Umunneochi local governments in Abia benefitting.
She said that the local governments were chosen because an independent commissioned research by another organisation showed they were the most backward in development in Abia.
She called for their collaboration and contribution to change the trajectory of the local government and its people.
The Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at WACOL, Mrs Egodi Igwe, and the Abia State WACOL Coordinator, Lady Ugo Kalu, moderated the sessions.
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