Coalition Society  Demands Transparency  from National Assembly

#OpenNASS, a coalition society has demanded that the National Assembly be more accountable and transparent as regards to its budgetary allocation and spending.

This demand was made public at a press conference held on monday, in Abuja after a survey had been conducted across a broad spectrum of people on the governance and democratic process in Nigeria.

Dan Nengal, Programme Officer, Enough is Enough Nigeria (EiE) who spoke for the coalition explained that the lack of accountability in the National Assembly is a danger to the democratic run in the country, adding that a non compliance to transparency from an institution that seeks to be responsive, accessible, representative and accountable can not be held accountable for proper leadership.

"those who are elected to provide oversight over the executive arm's implementation of our budget cannot be expected to provide leadership and ensure accountability when they refuse to be accountable with resources allocated to them." He said

He further added that " it is of great concern to Nigerians the members of the National Assembly do not know the content of their own budget, yet hold court over how the budget of the country is spent."

EiE went on to explain that several moves and request had been made to the National Assembly to respond to Freedom of Information(FOI) requests over the past three years, including a court order for the Assembly to release details of its budget.

Further adding that although the Senate President and speaker house of Representatives had promised to make the 2016 National assembly budget public, no efforts had been so far to do so and this has pushed for a higher number of people to join the #OpenNASS Campaign to demand to transparency form the Assembly.

The OpenNASS project is a an advocacy campaign aimed at tackling the major disconnect between the elected representatives and the general voting public. This they tend to do by educating voters on their rights to demand the dividends of democracy. And to achieve this #OpenNASS has been active on social media and main stream media.

The coalition also intends to increase interactions with the public via toll free flash service lines, which would run in the three major languages igbo, hausa, and yourba, including the English language and pidgin.

(08139861001, 08139861002- toll free flash service lines)