Lawmakers Vows To Partner CSOs On Bills, That Would Help Serve Kaduna People Better

Lawmakers Vows To Partner CSOs On Bills, That Would Help Serve Kaduna People Better

By: Femi Mustapha

Members of the Kaduna State House of  Assembly have promised to partner with Civil  Society  Organizations in respect of bills and motions that would help them serve the interest of the people better.

The Chairman, House Committee Chairman on Information, NGOs and Development partners, Hon. Henry Marah, asserted this during A One-day Advocacy Dialogue, held in Kaduna on Wednesday on “Open legislature as an enabler for institutionalizing participatory budgeting in Kaduna state.” held on Thursday.

Hon. Marah who represents Jaba LG said that the government of Senator Uba Sani is committed to ensuring that everybody including those at the grassroots gets the dividends of democracy.

He also disclosed that the Governor has given every lawmaker in the state Assembly the privilege to identify a project to a particular sum as their constituency project, adding that he will intimate the Hon. Speaker of the state Assembly so that the CDC can form part of the 2025 budget.

Giving an overview of the event, the Civil Society Co-chair, of Open Budget OGP Kaduna, Mr. Seth Luke, said the objective of the meeting is to facilitate knowledge-sharing to deepen open legislature and parliament reforms in line with the principles of the Open Government Partnership, (OGP) raise awareness on the imperative for deepening the institutionalization of participatory budgeting, brainstorm on advocacy strategies to provide legal backing for participatory budgeting in the State; and also to generate commitments from Stakeholders to take the agreed strategies forward towards the institutionalization of participatory budgeting.

In his presentation,  Member of CLEAP, Yusuf Goje, said legislating the bill will properly guide the Lawmakers on the need to prioritize constituent projects that will be of benefit to the larger Community rather than the choice of few individuals on the ground of influence.

Earlier on, Goje defined CDC as a written document containing the development needs of a community listed in order of communal priority as agreed by all groups within the community. He said needs are in different categories and as such the majority of the community will suffer if they are not properly involved to choose the kind of project they want.

“When we are talking about community Development Chartered, It’s a written document containing the development needs of a community listed in order of communal priority as agreed by all groups within the community.

“The Local Government Reform Law 2018 section 72 (1) c: stated that the local government estimate shall be deemed not to have been approved by the council unless it has been subjected to consultation with and input from members of the various communities in the local government in a town hall meeting,” Goje said.

The engagement was organized by Open Government Partnership, (OGP) Technical Working Group, (TWG) on participatory budgeting, in collaboration with the Civil Society-Legislature Engagement and Accountability Platform, (CLEAP) with support from  Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL)  a  Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) governance Projects.