The Niger Delta Citi
zens and Budget Platform, a civil society organisation, in the Niger Delta, has called for the participation of citizens of the region in budget formation and implementation.
Coordinator of the group, Mr Ken Henshaw, who said this in an interactive session with newsmen in Port Harcourt, regretted that the region experienced the worst budget performances in the past eight years.
Mr Henshaw, who is also the coordinator of social Action also decried the inability of some states in the region to make copies of their 2016 budgets available online for public scrutiny.
He said that Social Action would continue to canvass for an open budgetary process in the region.
“Social Action’s budget advocacy activities are aimed at calling attention to the need for citizens to get actively involved in the processes of fiscal governance.
“Evidence indicates that where this is the case, the performance of governments has significantly improved”
According to him, monitored reports across the Niger Delta indicate that the 2015 budgets in most of the states witnessed poor performances.
“The health, agricultural and educational sectors witnessed the most disastrous performances within the period under review. Most of the projects in these sectors were never executed despite the fact that monies were approved for them,” he added.
Mr Henshaw also said that some of the projects had become a recurrent decimal in the last eight years and stressed the need for a new approach to budget formulation and implementation in the region.
