Etta Michael Bisong
Over 40 participants constituting members of the non-governmental organisations [NGOs] and journalists received training on how to use a newly developed Education Budget Tracker (EBT) to monitor the quality of services in public institutions in Zamfara State.
Jointly coordinated by Connected Development [CODE] and the State Voice Accountability Initiative [SAVI], the 2-day event organised in Gusau, capital of Zamfara state focused on building the participants knowledge on how to use the EBT to find and liberate budget data, create visualisations and receive feedback via SMS and web platforms.
Being one of the projects funded and implemented by the Department For International Development (DFID) in Nigeria, the training also concentrated on enhancing their capacities on monitoring and evaluation components, data expedition, data mining as well as how to populate online information to engage policy makers in decisions making.
Giving details on the objective of the exercise, monitoring and evaluation expert working with CODE and one of the facilitators at the event, Oludotun Babayemi, hinted that his organisation is tasked with the responsibility of providing the necessary technological support to facilitate the development of the EBT while the NGOs, media and other trusted partners are expected to provide reports on the status and implementation of capital projects by sending information such as – name of person, location and report containing project implementation status to a dedicated mobile number.
His words: “Going forward, CODE and the Budget Monitoring Group will be using this tool in monitoring project implementation in Federal Technical College of Education, Gusau; Federal Government Girls College, Gusau; Federal Government College, Anka; Federal Polytechnic, Kaura Namoda and other state institution for which budget is made available.”
Babayemi explained that as government MDAs gradually make their budgets data transparent both online and offline, stakeholders can easily monitor and evaluate the performance of these capital expenditures.
Also, commenting on the significance of the software application, chief executive of CODE, Hamzat Lawal, said the tool seeks to empower CSOs and citizens to hold government accountable on public spending using mobile phones, local knowledge and content in the education sector, while providing policy makers with concrete feedback from the people on ground.
“This would help bring the government closer to the people to better serve them on education interventions that go to the state while ensuring international donor support compliments government projects, so we don’t have duplications like in the past,” he said.
Zamfara state team leader of SAVI, Ahmed Ibrahim, during his contribution said the EBT platform contains SMS integration to empower people without access to internet to bridge the gap between them and policy makers.
“It was an interesting and educative 2-day event taking us through the budget cycle and how budget data can be used in monitoring service delivery through the budget tracker, we only hope this engagement can continue,” Ibrahim said.
The event ended with the participants accepting to meet once every month to share lessons and experiences gathered on the various needs and education interventions of the local communities.
