CJID Takes Social Accountability Project to Ukanafun

…Charges Citizens on Project Tracking 

Imó Etim

Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), in collaboration with MacArthur Foundation, has organized a Town Hall meeting in Ukanafun to sensitize the people on the need to engage government and promote public accountability in the State.

The Town hall meeting which was held at Ukanafun Local Government Hall, Ikot Akpa Nkuk on Monday, September 26, 2022 was supported by the “Udeme” project, an initiative of the CJID, which seeks to charge the people to track government projects and while asking relevant questions as regards to projects directly affecting them to get government to respond to such issues for the greater good of the people.

The CJID organized meeting which was tagged ‘Strengthening Citizens Participation in Public Accountability’, had people from Civil Society Organisation, CSO, National Orientation Agency, NOA and the Media as well.

Asari Ndem, Communication Manager at CJID, while taking participants on the need and how to get involved, highlighted tips like; Knowing who is in charge, gathering facts and data from National Assembly sites, Engagement of Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDA) as ways of getting involved and asking questions to draw government’s attention and response in a bid to get them to become more accountable to the people.

She said “ I don’t think I need to convince anybody here why they should get involved in public accountability. Reasons being that, when we take a good look at our environment, we just need to ask questions like;  do I have access to good roads, proper health care and electricity? Do I have access to information on public problems and things that affect our daily lives and that of our families directly?

“Today in Nigeria, Dollar is rising, the cost of living has gone up exponentially and nobody knows why. All of a sudden it is difficult to buy things in the market or put food on the table for our families. There is a way for it to be mitigated. There is a way for us as the citizens to ensure that the government that we voted into power is working for us. The first thing to know is, who is in charge, who has been put there to represent us”.

She further stressed that if citizens were yet to be partakers of town hall meetings, deliberations to help them understand the projects, other ways to get involved are through the leaders’ respective offices, social media handles, phone numbers and websites.

Asari noted that Udeme as a social accountability project was set up to bridge the gap between the citizens and the lawmakers, helping to track constituency projects, more so urging citizens to take part by visiting the sites UDEME or Udeme.ng to follow up, confirm and contribute to it.

Ambassador Peace Edem, while speaking on Citizens in Social Accountability, pointed out that one of the reasons for bringing the town hall meeting to Ukanafun was because CJID had noticed that Ukanafun has been without any functional health facility to cater for the health needs of the people for many years despite having the site for the popular Cottage Hospital Ukanafun.  He pointed out that the Cottage Hospital project has been appearing on the annual budget of the State with funds allocated to, but yet to be completed and left unattended.

Edem stressed that CJID needed to create awareness and engage indigenes of Ukanafun on how to ask relevant questions that will promote social accountability, while also urging them to be strategic, bearing in mind that they will surely be met with stonewalls, tasking them not to waver but strive to ask more, seek more and find a way out to gain the expected access and results.

Mr Mboho of CJID took participants on Understanding Public procurement, while Uchenna Igwe availed participants with documents to help them understand the project that matter to Ukanafun indigenes and to understand the current state of those projects, one of such,  the Cottage Hospital in Ukanafun left in an abandoned state for years.

Representatives of NOA, Media and CSOs gave their contributions and spoke on ways to improve Citizens’ participation in public accountability. 

The ‘Udeme’, project which translates to ”My Share” in English is an initiative of the CJID which seeks to simplify and make budget accessible in readable and comprehensible formats in order to promote accountability through tracking, monitoring and  implementation of projects in the country.