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From Geoffrey Anyanwu and Jude Chinedu, Enugu
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the State Accountability, Transparency, and Effectiveness (State2State) Activity has trained members of the Ebonyi State Executive Council on budgeting, revenue generation and good governance.
The two-day training workshop which took place at the Nike Lake Resort, Enugu, attracted over 30 members of the Ebonyi State Exco, including the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Prof. Grace Umezurike.
Speaking on the purpose of the workshop, the State Team Lead of the programme in Ebonyi State, Dr. Sam Onyia, said that it would assist members the State Executive Council get acquainted with issues around good governance and transparency in governance.
He said, “What we do is to find a way we would get the government to bring their attention to issues around governance. And one of the ways of doing that is by organizing a retreat for new EXCOS once they come onboard. We also organise retreats for the state legislators. We finished that of the House of Assembly last month. And now we are doing the same for the EXCOS in Ebonyi State.
“The issues are how do they allocate these resources to the various sectors efficiently and effectively in the primary healthcare sector, in the education sector and water sanitation and hygiene sector. So these are sectors that have a direct impact on the citizens and the downtrodden in the rural communities.
“So that’s why we are here. We aim to develop robust action plans that will promote good governance and will sustain good governance in Ebonyi State. We are making sure that they own this process. Once they own the process you are reasonably sure that the implementation will take place.
They are going to do this by themselves. Generate ideas, sign the action plan and follow up with Implementation. More importantly is that we will continue to support them in terms of technical advice to make sure that these things are done and monitoring the results that are coming from those initiatives.”
On her part, the SSG, Prof. Umezurike said that the workshop has been impactful and would help in positioning the State Executive Council members for the task of governance.
She said, “It has been very impactful, very revealing and quite educating. It has been an intensive exercise and every EXCO member and all the participants are happy because we’ve learnt a lot of things.
We are taking away a lot of things. First of all we are made to understand that the opinion of the people are very important to enable Ebonyi State Government to organise an open governance and that’s exactly what Our governor has in mind and he is working towards that. We’ve been told ways like the Community Charter of Demand (CCD).
“When you interact with the members of the community, you know exactly what the need is for your project to be very impactful to the general public. We also talked about engaging with the community, and engaging the rural people in governance.
“And that’s a great one because it gives us an insight on how to carry the rural people along and allow them to make their contributions in governance and also tell you the things the Government is doing well and the areas for improvement. We also talked about gender inclusiveness which is very important.
“You know that it’s very common, when we talk about gender you think they are referring to women, no. Gender means both male and female. The idea is that every category of persons needs to be included in decision making. We are also most importantly taught about budgeting which is very crucial to every Government.”
