Nigeria joining open govt partnership has been beneficial –Buhari

From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja

President Muhammadu Buhari has declared that the decision to join the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in 2016 has been beneficial.

According to a statement by Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, Buhari said this when he received a delegation from the OGP Support Unit led by the Chief Executive Officer, Dr Sanjay Pradhan.

He said when he committed Nigeria to the membership of the group at the London Anti-Corruption Summit, he was clear about the role the initiative would play in the fight against corruption and since thaen, “we have developed and implemented two National Action Plans on the Open Government Partnership.

“By next month (August), I will sign the third Action Plan, which is in the final stages of development. I am eager to sign the document so that we can continue to sustain the progress of reforms that we have recorded in the past six years of implementation.”

He outlined some of the successes that the country has recorded since it began to implement the Open Government Partnership in 2016 as follows:

“Our budgeting processes have become more open, citizens-centred and participatory. In accordance with the objective of fiscal transparency, all stakeholders, including the public are involved in the country’s budget making process, have access to the details of our budgets, and have opportunity to make inputs into it. As a proof of our progress, Nigeria was ranked among the best improved countries for transparency in the latest global Open Budget Survey.

“We have made significant progress in the beneficial ownership transparency in Nigeria. We produced a roadmap of Beneficial Ownership Reporting in 2016. By December 2019, we established Africa’s first Beneficial Ownership Register in the extractive industry. In 2020, we amended our laws to expand Beneficial Ownership Reporting to all sectors of the economy.

“We are currently building a robust national Beneficial Ownership Database, which will be deployed to combat global criminal activities including illicit financial flows and terrorism financing. We are equally convinced the Beneficial Ownership disclosure policy will support our domestic resource mobilization.”