NGO trains CSOs,Media on Public budget participation

No fewer than fifty different Civil Society Organisations and Media representatives were trained by OXFAM on community engagement in national planning and development.

The two days training was organised in Yola by PROACT, an NGO based in Nigeria and supported by OXFAM and funded by the European Union.

Speaking at the opening session of the training on Tuesday, Mr. Olumide Ojo, the PROACT project manager, said that the core objective of the retreat was improve CSO’s knowledge capacity on the engagement of community in budget planning and implementation.

“The training is designed to strengthen Civil Society Organizations’ capacity to support communities engaged in the budget process at local, state and federal government levels.

“The core objective is also to improve the CSO’s capacity to develop intensive Community Development Plan to enable active participation of rural communities in identifying their service delivery needs,” Ojo said.

The PROACT project coordinator, Mr Falaye Usman said the project was funded by European Union to help facilitate the process of bringing development approach to rural communities.

Usman said that the trainees were expected at the end of the retreat to be able to organise stakeholders at local and state levels for active participation in budget preparation, planning and implementation.

He observed that the reason why many states failed to implement their yearly budget properly was because they refused to involve communities during budget planning and execution.

He said the training would help government in following due process in budget planning.

The participants were drawn from Bauchi, Katsina, Taraba, Kebbi, Oyo and Lagos state.