By Philip Yatai

Some Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) on Saturday called on government at all levels to desist from using budget to satisfy the interest of family and friends.

The NGOs, Budget Research and Development Policy Advocacy Centre (BREDPAC) and Coalition of Association for Leadership, Peace, Empowerment and Development (CALPED) gave the advice at one-day budget strategy session with citizens on 2019 Kaduna State budget.

The groups, working to improve citizens’ participation in budget formulation and implementation in Kaduna State lamented that citizens’ participation in the budget process had remained very low.

According to them, lack of strong citizens participation in governance and particularly the budget process provides the avenue for the political class to use the process to satisfy their interest.

Dr Elisha Auta of BREDPAC said that the political class in the country was mainly concern with using the budget to allocate resources to themselves and to compensate their family and friends.

Auta, who stated this in a paper entitled, “Development Planning Policies, Budget and Service Delivery in Kaduna State”, added that such practices rendered the budget useless to the majority of the citizens.

According to him, such practices explain why so many interventions are being made but not much is achieved in terms of improving the lot of the people.

He explained that the central goal of government’s development plans and budget were to improve the standard of living of the people.

“This is mainly achieved through creation of environment for the people to grow their self-esteem and contribute their quota and increase citizens’ freedom by enlarging their range of choices.

“The expected result is the improvement in the social sector in education, health, water, sanitation and hygiene, nutrition, accelerated economic growth and eradication of inequality and poverty,” he said.

He called on the civil society to carry out massive advocacy to government offices and policy makers to change the mind-set of public office holders from being self-centred to community and people-centred.

“But you must have a good understanding of government plans and policy direction to be able to effectively engage the government.

“We must also push to ensure that allocation of resources through the budget are needs-based and are used for the purpose they are meant for,” Auta added.

Dr Peter Adamu, also of BREDPAC, defined budget as a government policy document that explain detailed revenue expectations and the allocation of such resources to competing demands.

Adamu also described the budget as a planning tool that translates policy into service delivery through the allocation of scarce resources.

According to him, budget process has become an exclusively political exercise in the country because of scarce resources, lamenting that the citizens were alienated from the process.

He equally urged civil society organisations to continue to push for open and inclusive budgeting process to hold government accountable in dealing with public resources.

Similarly, Mr Yusuf Goje of CALPED noted that the significance of budget was to address the security and welfare of the citizens through timely and effective service delivery.

According to him, the quality of citizens participation in the budget process determines the quality of public service delivery, stressing that citizens must rise up and engage the government to turn the tide around.

He explained that the objective of the meeting was to enlighten citizens on the budget process and generate advocacy issues to deepen citizens participation in governance in Kaduna state.