By Kenechukwu Ofomah
Awka
A town hall meeting targeted at deepening and institutionalizing accountability, and social inclusion systems, on Wednesday held in Awka, Anambra State Capital, with a call on communities and Civil Society Stakeholders to intensify efforts at tracking constituency projects in their localities.
The event was put together by the Connected Development (CODE) with support from MacArthur Foundation, under the ProjectTrust initiative, which aims to mobilize CSOs and Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) through the formation of a Community of Practice (CoP), to enhance social accountability processes and advocate for transparency.
The meeting came as a result of the gaps identified by the CODE, during its visit to ongoing constituency projects across various communities.
It was therefore designed to serve as a platform to raise citizens’ awareness of constituency projects and SUBEB funding, adopting NomTrac Tool and the implementation of the Anambra State Disability Rights Law.
Speaking at the event, the State Support Officer of Project trust by Connected Development (CODE), Ujunwa Ananwude said the initiative was to see how to make the relationship between the elected representatives of the people and the community persons more beneficial to the communities by empowering the people to effectively follow up on constituency projects.
According to her, their visits to some communities showed a disconnect between the elected representatives and their constituents, in terms of the projects they are executing for their people.
She said the event was tailored to discuss the result of project tracking and to explore further partnership to ensure that quality and affordable healthcare, education and WASH services are available to everyone.
“In some places visited including schools and health facilities, the funds budgeted for various projects were not utilized, despite the state government having released a substantial amount of the budgeted funds to them.
“We now went back and wrote an FoI letter to the government bodies to find out what was the problem. But we needed this town hall meeting to sensitize our community people on their rights as citizens and what they are supposed to do when they observe that things are not going on well.
“There is also the NomTrac Tool, which is an app that the people can use to nominate projects in determining their charter of demands, and also suffices for the tracking of the execution of the projects stage by stage,” she posited.
For Okey Onyeka of the Civil Rights Concern, the people needs to understand that they have a responsibility to press the government to work the way they want it, insisting that the communities cannot leave everything for government.
He said the job of the communities does not end with developing their charter of demands for the year, but should extend to monitoring and tracking of the projects to ensure that there are no deviations from the agreed charter.
In a presentation, the State Chairman of the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities, JONAPWD, Mr Ugochukwu Okeke, spoke on the provisions of the State Disability Rights Law, regretting that not much has been done about its implementation in the state.
He noted that the forum was apt to educate the participants on the provisions of the Law, to ensure that they become champions for the promotion of the law.
In their separate remarks, Ikechukwu Oforkansi, who is the National Vice President, Anambra State Association of Town Unions, ASATU and the woman leader of Ozubulu, Clara Ndupu, stressed on the need for the government to make their transactions transparent, especially when disbursing project funds for execution.
They said there is no way the people can track or monitor projects in their communities, when they do not know when the funds were disbursed.
Others who spoke at the meeting including a lecturer at the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University Igbariam, Dr Kenechukwu Makudo and a member of the State Children’s Parliament, Hon Sylvia Chinwuba.
They explained the need for the community stakeholders to be fully integrated in the execution of the projects contained in their demands.
They noted this was to ensure that they make inputs when things begin to go south.
