The Federal Government is set to launch a Citizen’s Budget Monitoring App for the purpose of achieving citizens engagement in open budget implementation.
This stride is taken towards attaining Nigeria’s commitment on Open Government Partnership among which is ensuring effective citizens’ participation across the budget cycle.
To this effect, an event was organized by the Budget Office of the Federation to review the app, across various states in the country, to ensure it would be a useful tool in achieving citizens’ participation in budget implementation oversight.
Explaining the importance of the citizen’s engagement in the budget process, an OGP epresentative, Stanley explained that it helps to achieve direct democracy approach to budgeting and strengthen inclusive governance by giving marginalized groups the opportunity to monitor the budget implementation process.
During the presentation of the app, Jude Oketa disclosed that it is imperative to utilize technology as a monitoring tool for budget implementation process, hence the need for the app.
He explained that the app is expected to be used by many Nigerians adding that, “there are over 180 million population in Nigeria, there are 146 million people who have access to mobile technology with 117 million and growing lines that have access to some level of internet connectivity.”
There were numerous recommendations and feedbacks from participants which are focused on ensuring that the app is inclusive enough, especially for people living with disabilities and those who do not have access to internet enabled devices.
For his part, Prof Olumide Ayodele, Technical Adviser to the Director General of the Budget Office of the Federation, said the app was developed due to recommendations by the Civil Society, which he said is an assurance that the feedbacks from the engagement process would be duly utilized.
Prof Ayodele expantiated that the focus of the app is for federal budgets and the need for the Civil Society Groups to sensitive the citizens to make use of the app.
He also mentioned the need for the participants to convey messages about the app to their constituencies do it can be put to effective use once it’s launched.