Sub National Budget Transparency Survey: KOGI STATE 2015 REPORT

HOW SERIOUS ARE WE ABOUT MOTHER AND CHILD NUTRITION IN NIGERIA

SERDEC / NYSC and the Journey to #SDG2030

Zainab is an orphan, her mother died during child birth and her father a local miner died from lead poison. Zainab lives with her uncle in a village that has no interest in educating a girl-child. One faithful day a trained MDGs/Development Knowledge Facilitator, a corp member posted to a community to carry out his primary assignment decided to take a walk through the community. He saw a young girl sitting under a mango tree, writing on a piece of paper and beside her was a basket of roasted groundnut which she sells to support her uncle’s household. He imagined what the little girl could be writing under a tree when she is suppose to be in the class, he moved toward her and asked, “yarinya” as fondly referred to small girls in Hausa language, “what are you writing” he inquired, the little girl looked at him for a while, smiled and answered, “I am drawing my own school”, The discussion went further and the corp member was touched by the little girl’s story and her dream to own a school.

That encounter was the beginning of Zainab’s journey through education; the corp member facilitated her enrollment into school and mobilized the leaders in her community to support girl child education, through information and sensitization the community got to know about the importance of girl child education. Today Zainab is a graduate and teaches at the community school, she is a strong voice for girl child education and a role model to other women in her community.

There are a lot more Zainabs sitting under a tree somewhere out there waiting for someone to reach out and there are a lot that have become victims of early marriage that have lead to health concerns that have eventually lead to death. The question is what are you doing to impact lives positively and support global effort in addressing local development challenges.

Zainab is a shining example of the immense effort and impact of the SERDEC NYSC/ MDGs Advocacy Project which since 2006 to date have trained over 2,700 corp members that have conducted training for 55,000 community development knowledge volunteers across the 36 state of the country on ways to domesticate the MDGs and apply it to sustainable community development issues. The step down training at the grassroot level, in communities across the 774 LGAs has been quite impactful. It has helped in increasing the number of school enrollment, access to health care services; environmental health consciousness and most importantly strengthen the role of communities in finding solutions to their own challenges through a community led approach.

With the transition from MDGs to SDGs, SERDEC and The National Youth Service Corp is opening its doors for new partnership and support in moving the sustainable development train. Haven played a key role in influencing the post-2015 process by actively mobilizing Nigerians to participate in the MyWorld Survey, SERDEC is mandated and ready to lead the process and set Nigeria on course to end poverty.  Support and partner with the SERDEC SDGs/NYSC Advocacy Project today, together we can achieve more. Let’s all step up for a collaborative partnership and be part of this journey to 2030, for people, peace, planet, and prosperity.

For inquiries and discussion on funding / support, do contact  Mr. Victor Omaye A. via email:  serdecnig@gmail.com. 

SERDEC lead Director making a Presentation at the National Civil Society Forum on Peace and Security.

COMMUNIQUE ISSUED AT A DIALOGUE ON FOSTERING CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS IN NIGERIA HELD AT ABUJA., MAY 17, 2015

PREAMBLE

Civil Society Organisations under the platform of the Nation Civil Society forum on Peace and Security anchored by the civil society legislative advocacy centre CISLAC organised a One-Day Dialogue on Fostering Civil-Military Relations in Nigeria. The event took place at Kanem Suites, Abuja on Tuesday, May 17, 2016. Papers and discussions at the Dialogue centred on topical issues such as Understanding the Military as an Institution and Addressing Civil-Military Challenges in Nigeria amongst others.  Highlights of the Dialogue are as follows:

OBSERVATIONS

·         The current counter terrorism operation in the North East of Nigeria necessitates fostering cordial civil-military relations due to the increasing presence of the military across civil space.

·         The military has moved from its primary Constitutional role of defending the territorial integrity of the nation to mainly internal security operations in support of the civil authority thus resulting in increased friction between them and civilians. This has implications for civil-military relations.

·         In view of the asymmetric nature of terrorism, there is the need for the populace to understand the adoption of a formidable counter-terrorism strategy by the military.

·         Knowledge about the role of the military in internal security as constitutionally provided by the populace is very shallow. This is often a major cause of civil-military conflict.

·         The Nigerian Air Force in its bid to promote favourable civil-military relations has established medical outreaches and emergency hospitals in some IDP camps across the North East to support of existing facilities.

·         Some communities are taking to self-help because they have lost confidence in the ability of the security agencies to protect them due to incessant attacks, not realising the importance of giving the military and other security agencies necessary the support to aid the counter-insurgency operation.

·         There seems to be a challenge identifying the difference between entitlements and privileges among security personnel as they are in the habit of taking privileges for entitlements.

·         Attitude is a major challenge in achieving favourable civil-military relations. The military often see themselves as superior and the others as inferior thus resulting in inter-Service rivalry.

·         Professional arrogance often displayed by military personnel discourages support for them by CSOs and other stakeholders who should ordinarily help to foster civil-military relationship.

·         Some major causes of inter-service rivalry among different security agencies include duplication of roles, indiscipline, and struggle for appointment among others. These are noted to negatively affect information and intelligence sharing.

RECOMMENDATIONS

·         Leadership of security agencies should endeavor to continuously train their rank and files on basic ethics required in discharge of their duties to promote civil-military relations.

·         There is need for security agencies to keep to/focus on their constitutional roles as well as intensify joint training to promote inter-service cooperation and collaboration.

·         In the asymmetric warfare currently prosecuted by the Nigerian military, maximum cooperation of civilians is needed as the terrorists live among civilians. Therefore they need to support the military.

·         Protection of civilians should be the first line/mandate of the military when engaging in any form of warfare.

·         There is need for improved synergy between the military, the media and CSOs.

·         The creation of Civilian Protection Policy should be considered. This should be done through a tool known as the Civilian Harm Tracking Response Mechanism to minimise collateral damage.

·         A mechanism to monitor and evaluate operations should be put in place in order to tactically manage future operations regarding civil military relations.

·         Pre-deployment training should be organised for security personnel involved in joint task force operations.

·         Specific roles should be spelt out for each security agency by an act of the National Assembly towards eliminating duplication of roles.

CONCLUSION

Participants at the Dialogue were resolute about the recommendations above and are determined to engage relevant stakeholders to ensure that the concerns relating to fostering civil military relations are addressed.

SERDEC, International Budget Partnership, UK, Centre for Social Justice, BudgIT and CIRDDOC launches the 2015 Nigeria Report of the Open Budget Survey

International Budget Partners, SERDEC, CSJ, Budgit, CODE, CIRDDOC Partners today to launch the Nigeria Open Budget Survey 2015 Result. The Open Budget Survey is the world’s only independent comparable measure of budget transparency, participation and oversight.

The Nigeria OBS 2015 Result Recommends as Follows:

On Improving Transparency:

Nigeria should prioritize the following actions to improve budget transparency:

·        Publish a Mid-Year Review and Audit Report.

·        Publish in a timely manner the Pre-Budget Statement and In-Year Reports.

·        Increase the comprehensiveness of the Executive’s Budget Proposal by Presenting more details on classification of expenditures for future, prior, and Budget years and on classification of revenues for future and budget years.

On Improving Participation

Nigeria should prioritize the following actions to improve budget participation:

·        Establish credible and effective mechanisms (i.e., public hearings, surveys, focus groups) for capturing a range of public perspectives during budget planning, and introduce public engagement mechanisms to support monitoring of budget implementation.

·        Hold legislative hearings to review and scrutinize Audit Reports.

·        Establish formal mechanisms for the public to assist the supreme audit institution to formulate its audit program and participate in audit investigations.

On Improving Oversight

Nigeria should prioritize the following actions to strengthen budget oversight:

·        Ensure the Executive’s Budget Proposal is provided to legislators at least three months before the start of the budget year.

·        In law and practice, ensure the legislature is consulted prior to the spending of contingency funds that were not identified in the Enacted Budget.

·        Ensure the supreme audit institution has adequate funding to perform its duties, as determined by an independent body (e.g., the legislature or judiciary).