By Aisha Gambo

A Pan-Africa NGO, Connected Development (CODE) has called on the National Assembly to ensure that its constituency projects improve the lives of the people, particularly in rural communities.

CODE Team Lead in Kaduna State, Mr Abubakar Muhammad, made the call in Kaduna on Monday, during a one-day workshop on constituency projects’ monitoring and evaluation, organised for government officials in the state.

Mohmmed called on lawmakers in the National Assembly to always consider the needs of community members when planning and executing constituency projects.

This, according to him, will create the needed impact on the lives of the beneficiaries and increase citizens’ interest and confidence on constituency projects being executed in their area.

He explained that CODE, with support from MacArthur Foundation, was tracking the delivery of constituency projects across the 23 local government areas of the state.

He said that the projects were being tracked under a project tagged, “Deepening Citizens’ Interest in Government Spending and Addressing Accompanying Corrupt Practices (DeSPAAC)”.

According to him, constituency projects on health, education, and agriculture, including empowerment programmes and grants, should be aimed towards improving the lives of the citizens.

“As we all know, a huge amount of money is being earmarked yearly for constituency projects, and as such, there is the need for information sharing to ensure transparency and accountability.

“There is also the need for massive awareness creation and advocacy. This is because a lot of people do not know that constituency projects are being executed with taxpayers’ money.

“Many residents erroneously believed that constituency projects were being funded with lawmakers’ personal money. This is not so.

“We believed that if the people know that constituency projects are being funded with taxpayers’ money, they will be interested in how the funds were being utilised,” he said.

Muhammad said that CODE had tracked 118 constituency projects, worth N6.4 billion across the 23 local government areas between 2021 and 2022.

He added that the NGO had equally partnered the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) to report any case of sharp practices in the delivery of the projects.

He explained that the workshop was organised to equip the officials with skills on data management, monitoring and evaluation, and identification of gender responsive constituency projects.

He added that the workshop was also organised to enlighten the officials on how to create linkages with rural communities to deepen Open Government Partnership.

One of the resource persons, Mr. Yusuf Goje of the Coalition of Association for Leadership, Peace, Empowerment and Development (CALPED), stressed the need for monitoring and evaluation in the delivery of constituency projects.

Goje, the Head of Governance and Advocacy, CALPED, said that monitoring and evaluation would help the government to get value for the huge resources being invested in constituency projects.

Also, a government official, Mr Mahmud Idris of the State Planning and Budget Commission, promised to pay attention to result-based monitoring and evaluation to ensure value for money. (NAN)