By Wuraola Oyedokun
The Bishop of Ibadan Diocese, the Church of Nigeria {Anglican Communion}, Most Revd Dr. Joseph Akinfenwa has called on civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations and other relevant stakeholders to participate in tracking the implementation and utilization of constituency projects, especially health and education sectors to get value from the allotted funds.
Akinfenwa stated this, over the weekend, during the workshop on capacity building on tracking implementation and utilization of constituency projects in Oyo State with the focus on health and education sectors {primary and secondary} organised by Rural and Urban Stewardship Initiative for Sustainable Development [RUSISD] which held at St. Annes Church, Molete, Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
The bishop emphasized that proper monitoring and evaluation of the projects is pivotal to meeting its intended purpose.
Akinfenwa said: ‘’ For a developing nation like Nigeria, education and health are two major developmental concerns of the government and all stakeholders in the development community. For this reason, significant percentages of every annual budget are committed to these two development focus areas. In addition, various development agencies and international bodies support government efforts by providing various forms of financial and other support for educational and health initiatives. Thus, year after year, large sums of money are expended for the purpose of achieving qualitative delivery of educational and health services across the nation.
‘’Over time, it has been discovered that in many parts of Nigeria, the impact on the ground does not often match the size or magnitude of funds claimed to have been expended on educational and health projects. This can be due to many reasons. However, it can be argued that the most unfortunate part of this scenario is that lamentations about project failure or outright non-delivery are often done as after-the-event occurrences. This post-mortem approach delivers no benefit, because in many cases, the damage is already done, and the culprit has already escaped.
‘’As a way out, effective and real-time monitoring and evaluation has been widely recommended for upscaling efficient delivery of developmental projects in Nigeria. Doing these will ensure that course corrections are made on time, and erring stakeholders can be brought to book before they do too much damage. To complement government efforts in this direction, and to enhance the gathering of verifiable and authentic M and E information, NGOs and civil society groups need to participate in efforts to track the implementation of development projects.
‘’It is towards this end that the Rural and Urban Stewardship Initiative for Sustainable Development [RUSISD] has initiated the project as a first step towards contributing to the solution of the age-long problem that we have described earlier. This laudable project is being executed with the support of UK AID’’.
On his part, Ven. Adewale Sanda, the chairman of RUSISD also stressed the need to track the projects especially in the health and education sectors.
‘’It is a faith-based NGO owned by the Ibadan Anglican diocese. The workshop is to track the implementation and the utilization of the various constituency projects that we have in the state. We have a project initiated by the federal government why we also have the one initiated by the state government. The goal is to track all the projects and to be very sure they are implemented and acceptable by the various communities’’.
In her remarks, Mrs. Chinyere Onohua said the project was getting the support of councils, civil society organizations and non-governmental organizations.
‘’Rev Akinfenwa is the convener and we’re happy we are getting support from the actors, including members of the ward councils and other CSOs. We’re working with other NGOs,which are not only from Ibadan but other parts of the state’’, she said.