The National Coordinator of Open Government Partnership (OGP), Dr Gloria Ahmed, has called for a four-year National Action Plan (NAP) for the organisation.
Ahmed, who made the call at the organisation’s NAP III Valedictory Thematic Working Group (TWG) meeting, in Abuja on Tuesday – yesterday, January 28 -explained that NAP has two tenures in its cycle, which could either be a two-year or four-year plan, stating that Nigeria particularly picked a two-year plan.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that OGP is a global partnership that brings together government reformers and civil society leaders to create action plans that make government more inclusive, responsive and accountable.
“What we have discovered is that it didn’t really work out for us because it came in-between two government periods,” Ahmed said.
“So, having a four-year plan will help the implementation of the plan to stabilise. Even when there’s transition, there will be less negative impact on the implementation of the plan.
“But when you have a two-year plan and somewhere in-between, there’s a change in government, and before you know it, there’s expiration of the plan and that has adverse effects.”
Stating that the four-year plan is much better and that that is what the programme is considering, going forward, the national coordinator described the NAP III implementation as the most challenging in the history of NAP implementation in the country.
“This is because of factors, such as political transition, OGP political leadership change and non-budgetary funding for OGP, amongst others,” Ahmed said.
“Nevertheless, we weathered the storm to facilitate the delivery of results by exploring other ingeniously created options in line with OGP principles of innovation and leveraging our co-creative strength and opportunities.”
Speaking to the strategic importance of the meeting, which was the last TWG quarterly one to be held under the present TWG and, by extension, NAP III implementation, the OGP coordinator said the meeting provided an opportunity to review, validate, harvest and consolidate the results achieved under the NAP III implementation.
“The meeting will also serve to put in place mechanisms for NAP IV development,” she said.
Ahmed said the lessons learnt under NAP III would provide the country with insights and considerations to be made for the effective preparation and implementation of NAP IV.
She commended the state actor co-chair, non-state actors co-chair, members of the national steering committee and TWG members for their hard work in spite of the challenges.
The Non-State Actors Co-Chair, Mrs Obialunanma Nnaobi-Ayodele, disclosed that NAP III addressed seven thematic areas, including: fiscal transparency, extractive transparency, access to information, environment, climate change, governance, civic participation and inclusion, as well as improved service delivery.
Nnaobi-Ayodele said the implementation of OGP NAP III has helped to improve the country’s participatory budgeting processes and service delivery in the public sector, adding that in spite of the achievements, a lot more still needs to be done.
“There is still the need for governments at all levels to continue to actively engage citizens in the work that they are doing.
“Let citizens have a voice in the governance process; access to information needs to be improved. The law is there but we need to deepen implementation.
“We also need to strengthen implementation around those areas that would help our citizens to actively participate and be actively engaged in the process,” she said.
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