From Victor Nwegede, Abakaliki
The State Accountability, Transparency, and Effectiveness (State2State) Activity, a USAID-funded project, Thursday kicked off its quarterly review meeting with the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and implementing agencies in Ebonyi State.
Speaking at the commencement of the two days program held at Sandiego Hotel in Abakaliki Capital City, the State Citizen Engagement (CE) and Capacity Building (CB) Specialist, Dr Ibiam Azu said the meeting would assist the participants to review the CSOs' activities in Ebonyi.
Dr Ibiam said the program would help them to review S2S activity implementation progress related to CSOs in general and CSO sub-grantees in particular. Also to discuss, collect and document results as well as lessons learned of CSOs activities' implementation including 'how GESI is mainstreamed in CSOs activities' implementation using the S2S GESI checklist.'
He further stated that the CSOs review meeting would strengthen collaboration and coordination among the CSOs in Ebonyi, and equally mainstream, boost and promote women's civic participation in governance and service delivery issues.
The CE and CB Specialist added that the event would be used to promote experience sharing and peer learning among CSOs in the state and also to discuss and resolve any issue or challenge, by agreeing on a way forward for the successful implementation of the activities. "It's an opportunity to identify next steps and develop action plans for the next Fiscal Year 2023 activities," he asserted.
He recalled that the Ebonyi S2S team had held a series of engagements since November 2021 with high-level government officials in relevant
Ministries, Departments, Agencies, MDAs, CSOs, People with Disabilities, PWDs, state legislators and traditional rulers in one year.
He explained that the engagement with the relevant stakeholders in Ebonyi allowed the body to introduce the S2S activity, and deepen awareness and understanding of the USAID S2S activity and the role of the state government, among others.
He noted that the State2State Activity is a USAID- a funded project implemented in Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Ebonyi, Gombe, and the Sokoto States gearing its actions toward increasing accountability, transparency and effectiveness of the targeted states and local governments (LGAs) in Nigeria for a period of five years, beginning from August 2020 to August 2025, though it commenced effectively in Ebonyi in November 2020.
Dr Ibiam also disclosed that the body focuses on improving the government's ability to plan and budget, raise revenues, increase responsiveness to citizens' needs and priorities and oversee service delivery in the health, education, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sectors as well as enhancing government and civil society capacity to manage conflict.
According to him, the key activities undertaken including its political economy assessment, conflict assessment, public financial management assessment and organisational capacity assessment were unveiled.
Their results including the baselines were established, with the priorities clearly defined leading to the intervention easily being made and buy-in by the stakeholders.
The conflict issues or areas were also identified, and mitigated with strategies and interventions offered as the gaps were all spelt out in the course of carrying out their activities.
Upon the numerous success stories of the different CSOs, who participated in the program, their presenters including Chimezie Ude Chima from the DIG Foundation, Ene Adanaya Peculiar of the Women Children's Health and Community Development (WOCHAD), Nebo Franklin of the Widows and Orphans Environmental Organisation (WEWE), Peggy Chukwuemeka Ijeoma of Parent-Child Intervention Centre, Lilian Ezenwa of Ebonyi State Local Government Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability Program enumerated some challenges.
According to them, the poor commitment of government on the release of the capital budget for social sector MDAS, political crises, community level crises, high cost of materials and services as against when project budget was made, insecurity, sit-at-home order of the IPOB, bad road, bad terrain, lack of water supply and basic amenities by the government were among top challenges against the execution of their CSOs activities in Ebonyi State.
