Worried by the poor implementation of budgets at the National and Sub-National levels, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC is partnering with the development Research and Projects Centre, dRPC to build the capacities of NLC to track budgets in Nigeria.
Disclosing this during a planning meeting at the NLC headquarters, NLC President, Ayuba Wabara, said the labour has realized that tracking budgets at the National and Sub-National levels remains the only opportunity for the labour to hold governments accountable and press them to implement what the signed as law.
” We realized that if we are to be able to hold governments accountable for their commitments the best way is to track budget as this will enable us to follow up with promises and allocations made as well as to ensure those allocations are released” Mr Wabara said.
The Labour, he further explained, has the manpower and the spread to track allocations and releases and to use the information gathered from those tracking as advocacy tools to states and National level governments for implementation.
”The support offered by the dRPC to build our capacities in the area of budget tracking will not only empower us to understand how budgets work but will enable the labour to trace, track and advocate appropriately” He added.
Dr Wabara, therefore, called on the dRPC to continue to work with the NLC through capacity building on budget tracking so as to strengthen the advocacy capacities of the labour in Nigeria.
In her remarks earlier, the Executive Director, dRPC, Dr Judith-Ann Walker, emphasized the strategic collaboration with public and other stakeholders to build their capacities to hold government accountable on their commitments to financing child and family health, as a development model adopted to strengthen broader participation in accountability and transparency.
She disclosed that under the Partnership for Advocacy in child and family health At Scale, PAS, the dRPC is currently working with 23 indigenous NGOs and 2 think tanks to hold government accountable to their commitments to fund child and family health.
Dr Walker commended the NLC for deciding to track budgets and to use its large network to hold governments at all levels accountable in terms of budget allocations and releases.
While assuring the NLC of the readiness to support it in building the capacities of its members to track budgets, she welcomes any further support the project will give to empower the labour in the areas of capacity building and advocacy.
Earlier, the Secretary-General of the NLC, Mr Emmanuel Okechukwu Ugboaja, described the dRPC as national asset that is working to complement efforts at national development. He assured that the labour will use the training extended to it to track budgets and releases at the national and sub-national levels.
