From Priscilla Ediare, Ado-Ekiti
Ready To Lead Africa, an NGO, has set up a team of project monitors across the 16 Local Government Areas of Ekiti State.
According to the NGO, the step is aimed at ensuring that government fulfils its electioneering promises to the people of the state.
ReadyTo Lead Africa, is an ecosystem of Emerging Young African Leaders committed to Constitutional Democracy, Youth in Governance and tech base civic works.
Godbless Otubure, the Global President of the NGO, while speaking at the training organised for the youths in Ado-Ekiti, capital of the state, said the major task of the 16 carefully selected youths (promise followers) is to follow the campaign promises of Governor Biodun Oyebanji in the 2022 governorship election.
Otubure said the goal of the project being supported by the Open Society Foundation, West Africa (OSIWA) is to follow the promises made in the different sectors of Ekiti State.
According to him “We will see how those promises are being fulfilled, some of the things the Governor promised the voters as they went to the poll.”
The NGO’s President disclosed that the project had been carried out in five other states in the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. “Ekiti is our 6th state, we have done it in Sokoto, Gombe, Awka-Ibom, among others.”
Otubure clarified that the programme was not designed for antagonism, but to ensure that promises were kept “We are going to work with the Government towards ensuring that they are doing what they are supposed to do for people.
“This training underscores our collective commitment to ensure that democracy is beyond just voting, it’s not just about voting people into offices but also holding them accountable and ensuring that they fulfil the promises they made to citizens while they were campaigning.
“What we are doing here today is training them on accountability organising, how to effectively follow and monitor implementation of projects by Government, report the projects, capture specific details in terms of the duration of the projects, the contractors, cost, geo-location because we have technology that empowers us to know where those projects are sited.
“The project also takes into account, the different segments of the project whether it is ongoing, completed but abandoned, completed but sub-standard, completed but not in use, completed but poorly designed.
“All of these is designed to give a level of feedback to Government so that they can understand that it’s beyond just approving projects to be built but that there is an External Institution that helps both citizens and Government to understand what is really going on.
“The government is not against the project, the project is not against the government neither is it a pro-government project.
”It’s the people-led projects that gives alternate platform for Government to talk about what they are doing and show to the world by way of saying, we know what you are doing, we know the areas you are doing them, we know who is doing what, when and how.”
He added, “all of this is designed to ensure that government actually works for the people, and it’s driven by people.
“That’s why we have promise followers to verify that. Today, we met with three Commissioners, (Information, Innovation and Youths), they all showed support and partnership because what we want to do is that there are a lot of things Government has done but people don’t know because they don’t trust government but it’s our responsibility to verify these things and showcase them because our App empowers sons and daughters of Ekiti State both home and abroad to be able to see what government is doing because the App is on App Store and Play Store.
“Yes, the outcome has been positive. People can see what is going on and after a while; yearly, we are going to do our awards, hall of shame and hall of praise. Governors who are incapable of doing projects across all the LGAs in their states will not be in the hall of praise.
“We have seen cases where governors choose LGA to do projects, it’s anathema to democracy, you do not do projects in one local government.”