Policy Alert Holds 8th Akwa Ibom State Open Budget Forum
Policy Alert, a non-governmental organisation working to ensure that policy, legislative, and business processes yield meaningful and sustainable outcomes for people and the planet has announced plans to hold its 8th annual Open Budget Forum (OBF) for Akwa Ibom State.
In a release signed by the organisation’s Programme Officer, Fiscal and Governance Reforms, Faith Paulinus, stated that the event is scheduled to hold on Tuesday 10th October, 2023 in Uyo, at noon.
According to the release, the OBF is a space for citizens, policy makers, legislators, media, and civil society representatives and other stakeholders to reflect on the performance of the previous/current year’s budget as well elicit contributions to the draft budget for the next fiscal year.
Paulinus said: “The OBF is a component of Policy Alert’s #openbudget campaign which seeks to promote budget democracy in the Niger Delta. Over the years, the event has helped to formalize the engagement between civil society and state actors on fiscal governance issues, promoted the reflection of citizens priorities in the budget and enabled more proactive disclosure of budget documents in states of the Niger Delta.”
He stated that the 2023 edition of OBF, themed “Towards an Open and responsible fiscal regime: Is Akwa Ibom really making progress” is quite timely and morally right for stakeholders to ask ourselves these great question knowing that the fiscal health of any nation is critical to its development as well will determine what development outcomes the citizens expects in the coming days. The OBF coming at a time like now is also very critical considering the fact that we now have new supply side stakeholders who need to ensure that they boost public’s confidence and trust through their actions in the coming days within the confines of the offices they occupy.