By Sani Idris
A Non Governmental Organisation, Connected Development (CODE), on Wednesday trained Community Monitoring Teams (CMTs) on constituency projects funding vehicles and social accountability to enhance dividends of democracy across communities in Kaduna State.
The one one-day training was also to equip the participants (CMTs) who cut across various communities in Kaduna with the knowledge and ways of tracking funds meant for community and constituency projects tagged ‘FollowheTMoney’, and gender-responsive service delivery and strategy meeting.
The training was under the CODE’s project, ‘Deepening Citizens’ Interest in Government Spending and Addressing Accompanying Corrupt Practices (DeSPAAC)’, in Kaduna State, which is supported by the MacArthur Foundation.
CODE’s Project Manager in Kaduna, Kingsley Agu, said the training was aimed at enhancing interest of citizens in the decision-making processes of the government and their expenditures especially in the implementation of constituency projects with focus on the 2021/2022 Zonal Intervention Projects in Kaduna State.
He added that the idea was to equip the CMTs with the needed skills and information to effectively track the projects at their levels by utilising the Freedom of f Information Act (FOIA) in requesting information from their legislators and contractors by following it up with tracking.
Agu noted that most of the constituency projects were planned and sited without input of the community members leading to duplication wastage, and abandonment due to lack of tracking and monitoring.
He urged the CMTs to ensure taking ownership of projects in their communities for their own benefits and gains of democratic dividends.
Also speaking, the CMTs, call on CODE to restrategies in carrying out advocacy in communities by engaging all the necessary stakeholders, to ease their burden.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that the CMTs were also trained on policy advocacy and strategic communication, and how to engage, hold townhall meetings and taking up key outcomes of the meetings.
NAN also reports that the CMTs were taught report writing and impact reporting, among others.
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