ActionAid Nigeria, in partnership with the Centre for Information and Communication Technology (CITAD), has urged Nigerians to demand good governance from their political leaders.
ActionAid Nigeria Country Director, Ene Obi, who made the call during a three-day capacity building and training for change-agents in Abuja, said that the nation was still underdeveloped due to poor leadership.
Development Diaries understands that the training, which was organised for activists and facilitators from remote communities in Abuja, was aimed at equipping participants with social auditing tools to enable them to engage project-implementing agencies for transparency and accountability.
In her opening remark, Obi said that the country’s failure to progress was due to the eagerness for leadership positions without any plans for implementing positive change despite the great potentials of the nation’s youthful population.
‘Many of our politicians have no sanity’, Obi said. ‘If you (participants) do not leave the stage better than they met it then you are a failure’.
The Social Mobilisation Manager for ActionAid Nigeria, Adewale Adeduntan, said, ‘We are trying to create an approach whereby we can interact with our leaders in terms of the projects and the intervention they bring to communities’.
On governance at the grassroots, Adeduntan said that people’s involvement or participation in their local communities would accelerate development in Nigeria.
The Programme Officer for CITAD, Salma Abdulwaheed, who also responded to questions from journalists, said that the participants were already eager to train others in their respective communities.
She said, ‘After this, they will engage their community leaders to join in the campaign and with their supports, they will be able to engage any politician and demand for accountability and transparency’.
Participants who shared their experience said they had learnt enough to demand accountability and transparency from their leaders.
One of the participants, Jamila Inusa, said ‘I now know how to face my local government chairman or councillor to question them about what they are doing or not doing for our community’.
Source: Titanic Media
Photo source: ActionAid
