By Philip Yatai

The Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL), a governance programme has engaged relevant stakeholders on strengthening inclusive participation in procurement processes in Local Government Areas.

The engagement was organised in collaboration with Local Government Accountability Mechanism (LGAM), a citizens and government dialogue platform on local government governance.

The State Lead Facilitator, PERL, Mr Adejor Abel, said at the opening of the meeting in Kaduna, that the move would deepen transparency and accountability in local governments procurement processes.

Abel said that the objective of the meeting was to brainstorm on strategies for effective deployment of tools for tracking compliance in procurement processes.

He added that the meeting was also to develop and adapt procurement and project tracking tools; develop a work-plan for tracking procurement and share findings with stakeholders.

He pointed out that procurements were being facilitated electronically, adding that the measure should be extended to local government councils for transparency.

“So far there are about 959 awarded contracts uploaded on the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) portal, but only five local governments have submitted their contracts to be uploaded in the portal,” he said.

Mr Yusuf Goje of the Coalition of Associations for Leadership, Peace, Empowerment and Development, explained that the goal of LGAM was to strengthen the institutionalisation of local government reforms and fiscal discipline.  

Goje, a member of the LGAM secretariat, added that the mechanism also seeks to Improve quality service delivery, increase community engagement, ownership, and build citizens’ confidence in governance.

He identified Community Development Chatter (CDC) as one of the platforms for citizens engagement in the procurement processes.

He explained that the CDC was a tool that citizens use to identify their community needs, prioritize them, and use the CDC to influence local government budgets.

This, according to him, is a bottom-up approach to the budgeting processes.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that participants at the meeting resolved to pay a courtesy visit to the Ministry for Local Government to create better understanding and usage of the OCDS.

They also called on the local government councils to continue to engage relevant stakeholders and share information on procurement processes.

The participant also agreed to partner with relevant professional bodies to help interpret Bill of Quantity to ensure delivery of projects according to specifications.

They also urged Kaduna State Public Procurement Authority to strengthen engagement with citizens in collaboration with the Open Government Partnership Technical Working Group on Open Contracting.