Kaduna’s participatory budgeting in retrospect

By Femi  Oyelola

There is no  doubt that  citizens’ participation in the budget process is a catalyst for inclusive and sustainable development.

Kaduna State  officially adopted participatory budgeting, with the approval of the Community Development Charter (CDC) protocol in 2022 by the State Executive Council (SEC).

Underscoring the essence of this initiative, the Head of Governance and Advocacy, Coalition of Association for Leadership, Peace, Empowerment and Development (CALPED)  Mr. Yusuf Ishaku Goje explained that the Local Government Reform Law. 2018 has provisions in section 56 mandating Councils to develop a culture of participatory governance by creating conditions for local communities to participate in development planning, budget formulation and performance assessment.

Also applauding this,  Malam Isah Ahmed, a Community Development Charter (CDC) champion, said the LGEA Primary School in Jangargari Community, Jampalan Ward, Ikara Local Government Area (LGA), which was established in 1976, since inception had only one block of now overcrowded classrooms.

According to him, to ameliorate the unconducive learning environment for the pupils, the community stakeholders during the CDC process nominated the construction of an additional block of two classrooms as a priority, which was submitted to the Local Government Council.

As a result, an additional one block of two classrooms has been constructed and equipped with desks, chairs and blackboards. This has reduced the overcrowded state of the classes. As currently, the teachers and pupils are enjoying a conducive teaching and learning environment. Similarly, due to a fire outbreak that burnt one block of two classrooms and an office in L.E.A Primary School Mahuta, in Igabi Local Government Area, classes were usually congested and not fit for learning.

Malam Usman Adamu, a CDC Champion, said that “this caused serious challenges in the school that made learning very difficult to the extent that the school management borrowed the premises of neighbouring houses to hold classes.”

In 2022, the Mahuta community members identified and nominated the project during the CDC process. Impressively, after the Kaduna State Government disbursed the Local Government Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (LFTAS) grants to the 23 LGAs, Igabi LGA used its share of N3.4 million to reconstruct the nominated burnt block of classrooms currently in use.

Equally important is that since signing onto the Open Government Partnership (OGP) reform initiative, the State has consistently adopted the commitment on an open budget in the two previous State Action Plans (SAPs), as well as the current draft.

The commitment has advanced more effective citizens’ participation in the entire budget process. As well as enabling the integration of the CDC in the budget formulation and implementation process.

This has been strengthened by the automation of the CDC submission process (www.citizensdemand.org), approved by the SEC, which has seen an increase in the inclusion of hitherto excluded communities in the budget process.

The CDC process increasingly empowers citizens to work collectively in an inclusive, participatory and consensus-oriented way to prioritize community needs.

These prioritized needs are then submitted to both the State and the 23 Local governments to form the annual budgets.

Evidently, the Kaduna Local Government Accountability Mechanism (KAD-LGAM), with support of the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) funded Partnership to Engage, Reform & Learn (PERL), annually deploys the CDC influence and performance tracker to assess the extent citizens are shaping the annual budgets.

It was  gathered  that  in 2022, the citizens’ prioritized needs of the 23 local governments on average had a budget release performance of 40.36%, an improvement from about 30% in the previous year.

Goje  observed  that beyond budget releases, evidence now shows, as highlighted in the first few paragraphs above, that some CDC nominated projects have been successfully implemented.

“Thankfully, though we are not where we want to be, we are not where we used to be,” he said.

Goje stressed that the State Governor, Senator Uba Sani, in line with his SUSTAIN pillar on Nurturing Citizens Engagement, particularly as regards community engagement, will need to do more to not only sustain the gains of CDC (participatory budgeting) but also deepen it to enable wider citizens’ buy-in of the government’s policies, programmes and projects. More so, that the Governor has publicly declared that the priority of the administration will be rural developed.

He is of the view that  Council Chairmen  also have  a critical role to play in fully embracing the CDC process and increasing spending on community nominated projects.