CHRICED Kick-starts Second Phase of Community Driven Anti Corruption Initiative.

By Hannah suleiman Abba 

The Center for Human Rights and Civil Education (CHRICED) has strengthened its anti corruption, Accountability projects in Kano.

Speaking at the close- out press briefing on securing the future of Nigerian democracy through citizen mobilization for accountability and collective actions,

CHRICED Executive Director Dr Ibrahim M zikirullahin noted that the project aims are to mobilize citizens to put spotlight on delivering of critical services in Kano State.

The Full Text of the Press Statement

This project aims to address corruption and its debilitating effects on the delivery of quality social services to historically marginalized citizens in Kano State, Nigeria.

It will sustain, institutionalize, and deepen the impacts of the previous project, as well as improve CHRICED’s technical and programmatic capacity. It will also address the opaqueness, lack of accountability, and lack of transparency that have characterized the implementation of Zonal Intervention Projects, also known as Constituency Projects.

According to the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), the Constituency Project delivery process in Nigeria continues to be blighted by corruption, lack of beneficiary participation, and poor project delivery outcomes, resulting in the loss of value and waste of scarce public resources. The body of evidence, which implicates lack of financial accountability as the cause of Nigeria’s poor governance, confirms the reality of pervasive corruption in governance throughout the country.

In the 2017 Chatham House Report; Collective Action on Corruption in Nigeria estimates that between 1960 and 1999, close to $400 billion was taken from Nigeria’s public accounts .

In addition, the report states that between 2005 and 2014, approximately $182 billion was lost due to illicit financial flows. This stolen commonwealth effectively represents the investment gap in building and equipping modern hospitals to reduce Nigeria’s extremely high infrastructural deficits and maternal mortality rates – estimated at two of every ten global maternal deaths in 2015; expanding and upgrading an education system that is failing millions of children; and procuring vaccinations to prevent regular outbreaks of preventable diseases.”

This project is therefore designed with the understanding that the effective participation of citizens, in the governance process can only be increased if those on the demand side have the knowledge, skills, and in-depth understanding of how to engage the institutions relevant to their welfare.

CHRICED sees potentials in organizing communities by equipping them with the skills they need to exert pressure on supply-side actors to ensure their perspectives are heard and the delivery of essential social services.

CHRICED will harness the political voice of marginalized groups and assist women, youth, and persons with disabilities (PWD) groups across the 44 LGAs of Kano State in organizing and advocating for priority issues and demanding accountability in the use of public funds.

Through this initiative, citizen voice will be amplified, and the OGP/Freedom of Information law (FoI) will be utilized to influence the culture of citizen participation in governance processes. Through this initiative, CHRICED aims to reduce corruption in public service delivery and bridge the trust gap between the government and the citizenry.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, the substantive activities to implement and achieve the project goals are mapping of constituency offices and tracking of constituency and other key public projects; holding capacity-building workshops, training for media and CSOs, conducting community enlightenment workshops for community-based organizations, market associations, artisans and unemployed groups, women, and youth organizations, PWDs, labor unions, and neighborhood associations.

These workshops will train participants from Kano State’s three senatorial districts on how to identify and map constituency offices and track constituency and other key public projects, yielding a wealth of constituency project data for citizen accountability constituency projects. We will be deliberate in the selection of participants to achieve inclusion by paying attention to gender, youth involvement and people with disabilities.

We will make our selections from among community-based associations, youth networks and others based on affiliations and commitment. This will ensure the groups and the youths can continue to apply the new skills from the training beyond the project lifespan.

CHRICED will also make our training manuals available to the CBOs for their own use.

In addition, to improve information flow and dialogue between constituents and political representatives in Kano State, CHRICED will facilitate the articulation and introduction of pro-poor constituents’ needs, concerns, and issues into the 2025 budget processes and constituency projects in the three senatorial districts and advocate for robust implementation of OGP in Kano state through the facilitation of the Kano State Civil Society Accountability Forum.

We will work with gender experts and advocates to do a gender analysis of the budget and use the report as part of materials for the State-wide stakeholders’ meetings, 3 town hall report-back sessions, radio interactive shows, and 2025 budget public hearings. That way, we hope to spotlight deficiencies in the budget proposals for 2025 and press for changes to meet the needs of marginalized population including women, youth and people with disabilities.

We will also produce information booklet (in English and Hausa) containing the contacts of the state and federal legislators, the publication of policy briefs, the production of IEC materials, and the holding of regular press briefings. These activities will also provide community journalists and bloggers the ability to cascade investigative reports to local settings by translating text and modifying investigative reports to match with local circumstances.

Finally, it is pertinent to state that the project objectives and activities may not be achieved if the citizens, the ultimate target of constituency project’s intervention do not take the interest in closely monitoring and tracking to ensure the duty bearers in the implementation agencies put these resources to proper use.

CHRICED project on strengthening accountability and transparency in constituency project service delivery would provide the needed tonic for citizens to take a greater interest in how public resources are used to deliver this critical service, upon which trillions of Nigerian monies are appropriated. CHRICED therefore calls on citizens across the 44 local governments areas (LGAs) to brace up to be counted in the task of moving the governance debate towards addressing the issues in this critical sector of constituency projects. This project is yours because it is about the you and your community.

At this juncture, permit me to express our profound gratitude to The John D. and Catherine T.

MacArthur Foundation for its belief in the future of Nigeria, and for its big bet on the future of millions of Nigerian people, who could be potentially denied a chance in life, if corruption is allowed to eclipse our governance system.

When the history of Nigeria’s struggle against graft is recorded, organizations like MacArthur Foundation will definitely occupy a very prominent place in that record. We acknowledge all other grantees of MacArthur Foundation working in similar area.

To our project communities, opinion leaders, the Board, and the staff of CHRICED, I thank you for the support and wish everyone a great experience as this important project begins.