MARKET NEWS
Why Nigeria’s budgets fail to achieve results – Salawu - PUNCH
Former information Director, Kogi State Ministry of Information, Steve Salawu, has outlined reasons responsible for the failure of federal and state to achieve full potential set out in the proposals.
According to him, they included: poor citizens’ engagements and tracking efforts, as well as contract inflation.
Salawu spoke on Wednesday as a facilitator at a two-day training workshop on Budget Tracking & Reporting for about 30 journalists in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital.
“Poor procurement platforms that would ensure transparency in procurement of equipment as well as assigning projects to incapable hands are also some of the reasons budgets have not been living up to expectations over the years”.
The training workshop was organised by the Stallion Times Media services in collaboration with MacArthur Foundation as part of ‘Get Involved, Dialogue and Improvement Project GDRIP’.
Earlier, the representative of Stallion Times, Isiyaku Ahmed, who was the project coordinator, had said that the aim of the training was to build the capacity of journalists on budget processes and procedures, train journalists on how to track and report constituency projects, and develop and write investigative story ideas on constituency projects.
In a presentation, a facilitator, Mr Henry Omokaiye, stressed the need for journalists to monitor constituency projects so as to make the people feel the presence of government in their constituencies.