Civil Society Organizations in Jigawa State have identified some of the bottlenecks delaying the tracking of some of the government’s projects.
The Chairman Exceptional Leadership and Integrity Promotion Initiative (ELIP) Jigawa State, Isah Mustapha, disclosed this in a stakeholders meeting organised by Connect Development, CODE, held in Dutse.
The meeting was aimed at mobiizing CSOs and CBOs to constitute the Community of Practice (CoP) within a state to scale up social accountability processes and demand transparency in their respective states.
Mustapha said the objective of civil society organizations was to bring citizens’ concerns to governments and monitor policies at the community level.
He said part of the challenges include corruption among contractors and the inability to access bills on time.
He noted that civil society organizations can do better and more if these problems are resolved.
Responding, the Director General, Jigawa State Due Process & Project Monitoring Bureau, Kasim Muhammad, said the move Is about nomination and monitoring of projects, which is in line with the mandate of due process aimed at ensuring effective and efficient service delivery.
According to him, “It depends on who submitted the request and the time he went to collect it, but we have been preparing bills of quantities and waiting for people to come and they will not be forthcoming, so that’s not an issue, but still we are instituting on how things will work better.
“The issue of corruption with some contractors is an issue affecting the whole world, but on our part, we have been trying our best to tackle the problem. We will also collaborate with public complaints and anti-corruption agencies to tackle the problem,” he stated.
