Introduction
Nigeria’s subnational levels (states and local governments) have access to public resources meant to drive development at these levels. However, over the years, interventions at advocating for accountability and transparency in governance have been robust at the national level. Still, more focus should be given to the state level, reducing the opportunity for citizen participation, especially youth and women.
By design, the states are closer to the people at the grassroots. The provision of critical infrastructures and services, including education, healthcare, and WASH which is majorly the responsibility of state and local governments is close to being neglected with millions of citizens bearing the brunt. Narratives around good governance and accountability have been major on the federal government rather than the state governments. The multidimensional poverty index (MPI) published in 2022 by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) alluded to the fact that there is a need to monitor and track how public funds are allocated and released for capital projects by the state government.
Strengthening Participation, Accountability and Transparency in States’ Capital Projects (SPATS) is a citizen support project designed to run under PROMAD’s social accountability initiative, FollowTheProject to improve project and procurement transparency and accountability through strengthening citizens’ oversight of subnational institutions implementing public projects in Nigeria. In this project, PROMAD has identified and prioritised the need for capacity-building for young people as well as grassroots community stakeholders to perform oversights, report findings and engage to improve the delivery of states’ capital projects.
Through the social accountability fellowship, 13 young men and women, including persons with disabilities (PWDs) from the 13 local government areas in Nasarawa will be selected for civic and social accountability learning. PROMAD will also conduct a human-centred lab for the opportunity to learn from the youth and government stakeholders to complement our plan to build a social accountability platform for FollowTheProjects and the redesign of our www.grap.org.ng platform for budget for community needs assessment to influence participatory budgeting in the subnational level.
Project Aim
The project aims to achieve our opportunity to learn from local stakeholders how to strengthen the capacity of citizens to oversight public budget spending in their communities to improve transparency and accountability.
Project Objectives
Project Partners
SPATS is supported through the WYDE Civic Engagement Project by the Kofi Annan Foundation (KAF); European Partnership for Democracy (EPD); Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD); the Oslo Center and funded by the European Union (EU).
Target Participants
Youth (young men and women 18-35 years old), persons with disabilities (PWDs) and state agencies.
Project Location
Nasarawa State, Nigeria
Project Duration
Five months (July – November 2024)
Enquiries
Contact, programmes@promadfoundation.org and emmanuel@promadfoundation.org