Opinion: BudgIT: When apologies are not enough

By Adam Adedimeji

Tracka is one of the schemes used by BudgIT, a Civil-Society Organization, with a self-tasked role to engage citizens on budgetary responsibilities from the government with a view to ensuring institutional improvement.

Tracka is a kind of feedback mechanism on governmental projects in Nigeria.

It is meant to facilitate citizens’ access to respond to projects and programmes carried out by government’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in their communities.

Set up in 2014, it is said to be functional in twenty (20) states in Nigeria.

The activities of BudgIT, especially with reference to Tracka, showcase the beauty of democracy by enhancing open society and citizens’ participation in governmental projects.

In other words, it is a manifestation of the common meaning of democracy, which entails a government with premium on the people in all manner of actions.

Provided it carries out its functions as outlined, which include monitoring government projects with a view to assessing their standards and completion as spelt out in budgetary allocations and, in turn, reaching out to relevant public offices and the concerned communities, BudgIT could be an eloquent testimony that the people in our respective communities are not puppets that have to accept whatever is dished out to them without questions or right of reply.

Recently, Tracka through its Twitter handle, @trackNG, brought its (un)doings to the public when the group alleged that Senator Adelere Oriolowo of Osun West Senatorial District got N40 million for a training programme for select persons in his constituency but ended up spending N2.5 million.

The tweet stated: “N40m was allocated in the 2020 FG ZIP (Federal Government Zonal Intervention Programme) for practical skill development and training of youths and women in fishing in selected areas in Osun West Senatorial District, Osun State.

We confirmed (that) 50 participants selected across 10 LGAs (Local Government Areas) attended the training and received N50,000 (each) as start-up grant.”

Tracka’s rush-to-the-social-media comment was further amplified by The PUNCH rush-to-the-press report of September 24, 2020.

Typical of how any job done in unnecessary hurry always ends up, both the social media post and the mainstream media report turn out to be a hatchet job that could misinform the undiscerning members of the public due to their deficiency in truth.

Since it is elementary knowledge that the legislature and the executive do not fuse functions especially in a presidential system of government as ours, it amounts to gross ignorance, to say the least, that Tracka appears not to know the glaring distinction between the constitutional roles of the two arms of government.

While legislators enjoy the liberty of nominating or sponsoring projects through budgetary provisions, the responsibility for the implementation of projects is strictly that of the executive arm.

In fact, projects, whether emanating from the legislature or the executive, are domiciled in the relevant ministry or agency of government responsible for the implementation of such.

In clearer terms, notwithstanding being the facilitator of the project through his legislative input, there is no way Senator Oriolowo can be involved in the implementation of Zonal Intervention Programme for practical skills development and training of youths and women in fishing recently conducted in selected areas of the Senatorial District.

It follows therefore that enquiries regarding projects implementation ought to be channelled to such relevant ministry or agency, except the mission of the enquirer revolves around mischief or anything other than overall public interest.

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Had Tracka not rushed to make defamatory insinuations that Senator Oriolowo had pocketed N37.5 million, the group would have found out the actual number of persons targeted to benefit from the programme and it would have realized that the beneficiaries are more than fifty persons that took part at the first batch of the training programme.

Tracka would have further known the exact percentage of the budgeted amount that was eventually released by the ministry to the agency in charge of its implementation.

Also, while it is true that N50,000 was disbursed to each of the fifty participants as starter-pack after the training, it is far from the truth that only N50,000 was spent on each of the participant.