CISLAC, CAN Train 50 CSOs, Women Groups on Budget Tracking in Jigawa
By: Ahmed Aminu, Dutse
The Civil Society and Legislative Advocacy Center (CISLAC) in partnership with Christian Aid Nigeria has trained 50 members of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), women groups and the media in Jigawa State on public budget processes and tracking.
The training, conducted through Prime Initiative under Tax Justice and Governance Platform, was to build the capacity of the participants on aggregating public demands for inclusion into government annual budget and tracking implementation.
Speaking at the training, Executive Director of Prime Initiative Comrade Muhammad Abdu Dutse added that the training would also build the capacity of CSOs, women-led groups and informal sector representatives to analyze public budget using a tax justice and gender-responsive lens.
“This is in line with our effort to promote justice, accountability and transparency in budget implementation, and the annual state and local government council’s budgets contain public demands and needs,” he said.
“The training will focus on how to identify the immediate communities’ needs and demands, process of presenting it to appropriate places to be captured in the budget. They were also to train in monitoring budget allocations, tracking and advocating for equitable service delivery in the communities particularly in education and health sectors.”
Comrade Abdu believes that time has come for CSOs and other non state actors to give more emphasis on monitoring education and health budgets, because the sectors have a direct impact on the less privileged, particularly women and children.
According to him, this can only be achieved if the Civil Society Organisations have full understanding of budget processes and public finance systems at state and local government levels.
In his remarks, the Director Planning, Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, Alhaji Umar Idris said tracking budget implementation would ensure accountability and transparency in the management of government finances.
