Citizens' groups in South West begin engagement on 2019 budget
The citizens' groups in the South West region have commenced engagement and activities aimed at ensuring that citizens' needs are well captured in the 2019 budget of the six states in the region.
The citizens' groups drawn from various Civil Society Groups in the region met in Ibadan, Oyo State today to agree on strategies for harnessing the needs of citizens for inclusion in the 2019 budget of the six states.
The meeting was organized by Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn, (PERL), a programme of the Department for International Development (DFID) to galvanize the citizens to ensure that their needs are included in the 2019 budget substantially.
The citizens' groups used the meeting to review the past efforts on budget engagement, analyse the social and economic situations in the South-West states and pledge to step up their engagement to achieve the objective of attracting priority to citizens' needs in the 2019 budget of the states in the region.
The meeting was attended by coalitions of civil society groups from the six South West States -Osun, Oyo, Ekiti, Ogun, Ondo and Lagos and participants made commitment to mainstream the needs of the citizens in the discuss around 2019 budget.
The leaders of delegations from the six states include the President of Network of Nongovernmental Organization in Osun State, Comrade Ibrahim Olayinka, the Chairman of Coalition of All Civil Society Organizations in Ondo State, Mr Franklin Oloniju, the Chairman of Lagos State Civil Society Partnership (LACSOP), Barr. Ayo Adebusoye, the Coordinator of Civil Society Coalition on Sustainable Development Goal in Ogun State, Mrs Mojisola Akinsanya, the Chairman of Civil Society Coalition for Good Governance in Oyo State, Comrade Taiwo Ibrahim and the Secretary of Ekiti State Civil Society Organizations, Mr Eze Remigun.
In his remarks, the PERL Team Leader in the region, Mr Wale Agbojo commended the citizens' groups for their efforts in strengthening democratic process to achieve good governance.
Agbojo said the meeting was organized to galvanize and prepare citizens' groups to engage executive and legislative arms of government in the six states to give priority to citizens' needs in the 2019 budget.
