IMO STATE PUBLIC ENLIGHTENMENT: "IMO STATE IS NOW BUDGETARY TRANSPARENT AND ANYONE CAN ASSESS IT GLOBALLY ~C.C.OSUALA

 

An Interaction between Chief C. C. Osuala, Imo State Commissioner for Budget, Economic Planning and Statistics and Prince Eze Ugochukwu, Special Adviser to Imo State Governor on Public Enlightenment.

QUESTION: Honourable Commissioner, may we get to know you.

ANSWER: My background is very modest. I am Christopher Chukwuemeka Osuala. I hold a Bachelors degree in Engineering, a bachelors degree in economics, and a bachelors degree in Law. I also have a masters degree in engineering and a PHD in engineering. I have previously worked for Rockwell Aerospace in California, for the NASA, the National Aeronautic Space Administration, and for Boieng Aurcraft were I rose to Executive Director. I have lectured for the University of Utah and served in 1999 as a member of the Nigeria House of Representatives for the largest federal constituency in Nigeria, Nkwerre, Isu, Nwangele and Njaba federal constituency. I am from Amaigbo, in Nwangele local government area. I have equally served in numerous federal boards.

Question: You said that International Organizations are seeking to partner with Imo State. What is attracting them? 

Answer: I have to situate my response based on some of the accomplishments of this Ministry of Budget, Economic Planning and Statistics. 

One of the things, Governor Hope Uzodimma's administration has done is to make it possible for the budget of Imo State to be transparent. 

Since the creation of Imo State in 1976,  there has never been a time Imo state budget was recognised by the World Bank. Not until the administration of Distinguished Senator Hope Uzodinma and courtesy of the fact that I became the Commissioner of Budget, Economic Planning and Statistics in March 2020. 

One of the things we did was to look at the template the World Bank uses in measuring budget transparency and one of those critical template is called Citizen's Budget.

Before now, Imo State never had a Citizens budget. So when I came-in, in March and pursued it as a team with the Ministry’s staff, to get Imo State engaged in World Bank programs.  By April 28th, 2020, we published the Imo State Maiden Copy of Citizen's Budget and uploaded it into Imo State website at www.imostate.gov.ng for easy access online as a global document, in Compliance with World Bank SFTAS program.

Upon our arrival, Imo State was rated in budgetary transparency in Nigeria at number 33 out of the 36 States. However, when we published the Citizen's Budget, Imo State immediately went up among the first 10 states in the whole of the Federation in regards of open budget system.

Now when we interacted with the World Bank and the Open Government Partnership (OGP), we discovered that we needed to do something to improve the budget transparency status of Imo State, the budget must be participatory - which means involving the President Generals of Communities, the CSO's and all the Non-Governmental Organisations in the State, through a feedback mechanism of informing us about their project priorities in their various communities; which will be reflected in the Budget. We did that, and captured all the various projects that the Communities want and published them online as required by World Bank SFTAS.

Then the next thing was that we adhered to the S F T A S-  State Fiscal Transparency and Accountability and Sustainability Program, under which we were asked to convert our citizens budget into our vernacular which is Igbo language. 

We are on record as the first among the South East states to have done that successfully and be recognised by World Bank - that is making the budget participatory in such a manner that if you cannot speak English but can read Igbo, it's accessible to you, thereby giving  the budget a wider coverage and consequently creating more Citizens awareness.

You know that the essence of budget is really a process of accounting the inflow in terms of fiscal resources that come into government in this instance, Imo State and the methodology to dispense the fiscal resources. This is the elementary basic knowledge of budget: ways and means principle.

So as custodians of public funds, our duty as government appointees; is to let the Citizens of Imo State, know how those funds come in and how they are judiciously appropriated to various projects; under the accountability doctrine.

When we published the vernacular version “Igbo version” of our budget, Imo State automatically went to the third position in the Federation, only behind Lagos and Kaduna states. This gave Imo State more prominence and with  these efforts, we received SFTAS grants from World Bank. The first was $300,000 then $500,000 another one was 1.5 million dollars when we published our quarterly budget reports.

In addition, We revised our 2020 budget to meet the COVID19 protocol requirements and after taken all the indices of what the government were doing to combat the pandemic, Imo State was the first State in South East Zone to receive 5 million U.S dollars SFTAS Grant around November 2020.

All these background needs to be established. Since this was done, most co-operations and other entities too numerous to mention are now interested to invest in Imo State in different sectors. 

Imo State is now budgetary transparent and anyone can assess our budget globally and know the projects that we are dispensing our cash inflow's on. So with this level of transparency; the quest to invest in Imo State becomes second nature.

Question: What of the Community Driven Development ( CDD), and the Community Social Development Projects. What is it all about for the average man on the street to understand?

*Answer*: The community social development project (CSDP) is actually part of the World Bank and Federal Government initiative domesticated in all the states of the Federation under their respective ministries of Budget and Economic Planning. What the program targets, involve various Communities to identify their needs. The communities initiates the project so as to take ownership. The CSDP evaluate and do the needs analysis of the people and the locations for their chosen projects. The fund then is used under the guidance of the World Bank to execute those particular projects within the communities.

Question: Do we have some of this project ongoing in Imo state ?

Answer: Yes. They are ongoing in several communities in Imo State. It is going on across various local governments in the state.

WATCH OUT FOR PART TWO OF THE INTERVIEW

Publisher: Don Martyn L.O Nwosu

Ikeduru APC Media Hub

08032950897

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