By Amby Uneze in Owerri
Worried by the shoddy nature of budget proposal and implementation in Imo State, citizens have decided to demand for open, inclusive, transparent and realistic budget that would impact positively in their lives.
Rising from a one-day workshop tagged “Open Budget Forum” in Owerri, the state capital, they lamented the crude way the Imo State House of Assembly passed budgets without public participation as well as the manner the state government implement same, indicating that budgets were not meant for the public good.
The forum which was put together by a non-governmental organisation, Development Dynamics (DD), in partnership with UKaid, and Actionaid, had described good budget as one that has the features of realism, transparent, flexible, accountability and inclusiveness and that it must be generated from the public.
In his presentation, the Executive Director of Development Dynamic, Dr. Jude Ohanele said that open budget meant that all of the people in a country or a state could access information on the revenues that were collected, the amount of funds allocated to different types of spending, and how international donor assistance and other public resources were used.
He pointed out that the entire budget cycle in government should be kept open from formulation to approval to execution to oversight, stating that budget is a law outlining how government is going to use public resources to meet the public needs.
“The budget is governments’ most important economic policy tool. Public budgets translate a government’s policies, political commitments, and goals into decisions on how much revenue to raise, how it plans to raise it, and how to use these funds to meet the people’s competing needs, from providing security to improving education and health care, to alleviating poverty among others”, he explained.
He added that that a budget system that functioned well was crucial to economic growth and poverty alleviation, noting that in many countries, including Nigeria and especially the states of the South East, economic problems were worsened by weak budget systems and faulty budget choices, because of its wide-ranging implications for the wellbeing of the people, the budget should be the subject of detailed scrutiny and debate by all the people.
In his contribution, Mr. Emeka Olisa of Strengthening Citizens Engagement in the Electoral Process (SCEEP) Imo State, gave an overview of a survey the organisation carried out in some communities in the state to determine the level of citizens’ involvement in the state budget process, to determine the level of community engagement/involvement in the state budget process, to determine whether citizens have access to the state budget, and to examine the role of stakeholders for effective preparation and implementation of public budgets.
He noted that a public budget was a political instrument that; weighed policy priorities against available public resources; specifies the ways and means of providing public programs and services; establishes the cost of programs and the criteria by which these programs will be evaluated for efficiency and effectiveness; ensures that the programs would be evaluated at least once each budget cycle; redistributes income; provides the government with a spending limitation; and provides transparency by which the government may be held accountable at the end of each budget cycle or political term.
Olisa enjoined government and State House of Assembly to ensure reasonable level of transparency, ensure all stakeholders are carried along in the budget process, citizens should be provided with the enabling environment that guarantees access to existing public budget such as website updates and other electronic devices.
Also they should guarantee equitable stakeholders input, maintain functional constituency offices as a liaison platform for information sharing with communities, regular communication to constituencies and community mobilization and oversight function to emphasize feedback from communities.
