OPEN CONTRACTING PROCESS IN EKITI STATE; CHANGING THE NARRATIVE OF ACCOUNTABILITY IN GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT PROCESS.
Accountability and transparency are essential tools for any public procurement system. This strengthens citizen’s capacity to engage the government and to ensure that the government works for the people and also making sure that there is value for every kobo spent on public projects. Transparency in public procurement also means that information on the public procurement process must be available to everyone: contractors, suppliers, service providers, and the public at large unless there are valid and legal reasons to keep certain information confidential. In all of this process, it’s important for citizens to know that it’s their right to know how government business is done, and contributing to government decisions is part of the process of Democracy that will help curb corruption and promote inclusive government and increase the dividend of Democracy at all levels.
Ekiti State CSOs capacity building on Open Contracting Process done by Public and Private Development Center has enhanced its member’s ability to engage government to demand accountability in public procurements especially in the Educational sector of the state.
CSOs are now more than ever interested in how governments are responding to the Freedom of Information Act 2011 and how the open contracting Process is done through constructive engagement and empowerment. CSOs are already increasing their capacity working with MDAs for the open contracting process in Ekiti State.
As a way of achieving Accountability in public procurement in Ekiti State, our organization Inspiration Care and Development Center (ICDC) was selected among other CSO and Professional bodies like the Nigeria Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NISQ) to monitor some SUBEB Projects in the state with support from Mac-Arthur Foundation. We monitored several ongoing projects through the use of data from the Ekiti State Open Contraction Data Portal. We have also successfully requested data leveraging on the FOI act in place.
One of the success stories recorded from our monitoring is the Story of Igirigiri Community In Ado Ekiti. Igirigiri is one of the farm settlement in Ado Ekiti, I remembered the first time I visited the farm was in 2018 during the Ekiti governorship election, I was accredited by INEC to serve as a mobile election observer assigned to work in Ado Local Government, and the farm polling unit was among the polling units I was meant to cover. With no access to good roads, the dwellers who were farmers found it difficult to transport their products to the market, and that has contributed to their impoverished state. They have no access to clean water, cell phone network, and electricity even though we saw electric poles, there was no transformer to power the community. With all of these conditions mentioned, we were hoping that at least the government will provide a good classroom for the children of these poor farmers. We were shocked to see the deplorable state of what looked like the only primary school built some years ago.
The state of this community would make one ask if the government is aware that people exist in this part of this world. We kept asking how will the government think the only dividend of democracy the community could enjoy is them having a polling unit to elect their choice of leaders without having any hope of getting anything in return. They were given the opportunity to be part of a process, but they weren’t given the opportunity to enjoy the benefits such as good basic amenities. It was obvious they needed a voice to advocate for them, but at that time I had no clue on how I could engage the government to advocate for the renovation and construction of a new classroom.
After attending a series of training conducted by PPDC, and selected to participate in the monitoring exercises, I saw this as a real opportunity to advocate for this community and ensure the government takes a serious step in tackling some of the issues identified. My first focus was on the only Primary School on the farm. I believed that most of the young people in the rural areas lack access to good education, which is the bedrock for building a successful future. We saw the need to engage with the government on this issue for the first time immediately after the first phase of the lockdown in 2020 when we visited the community to identify some of their urgent needs. With just a constructive tweet to the state governor @Kfayemi and the DG Bureau of Public Procurement in Ekiti state @egghead to state the dilapidated conditions of the School, this generated some reactions from the @egghead and the chairman of Ado Local Government. This was also followed up with Advocacy visits to all the relevant stakeholders.
The government promised to take proactive steps to contract the project and ensure completion in due time. With our efforts, we have now confirmed that the abandoned block of classroom had been completed and a sum of #10,804,838.35 has been approved for the construction of a new three classrooms with an office at Igirigiri, and we are currently monitoring this process to ensure that proper work is delivered by the contractor handling the project.
Finally, as a member of civil society, we must continue to advocate and promote transparency in the procurement process and safeguarding of compliance with the law among procurement officials in Ekiti State. However, there are still lots of challenges being faced every day as we go about this process; the inability of civil servants to share relevant information requested, low level of awareness of this process, and of course political will. There is a need to increase awareness and sensitization of this process among the people in our community, we must ensure we all take part in government decision processes, and to ensure citizens own the process and the projects delivered by the governments.
