Tinubu asked ministers to be accountable to Nigerians – Bagudu

The Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Abubakar Bagudu on Tuesday, January 30, revealed that President Bola Tinubu asked all his ministers to be accountable to Nigerians in all their dealings.

He said they were asked to not only submit themselves for questioning by Nigerians but also explain their dealings in details because the president is one of the most ardent proponents of accountability.

Bagudu further explained that the president has put his cabinet on their toes to ensure they all work towards delivering the agenda of this administration which is working towards a national development plan that would make Nigeria one of the developed worlds in 2050.

He said this in Abuja at the Social Accountability and Civil Society Fair/Exhibition event, Organized by the Joinbodi Cohort under the MacArthur Foundation on Nigeria program, themed “Reforming Governance to Enhance Social Accountability – Cultivating Peoples’ Power,”

The Joinbodi Cohort program brought together about twenty-one Civil Society Organizations in the country to unveil the research on Civil Society Efforts in Transparency, Accountability, and Good Governance in the country.

The minister said: “Accountability starts with all of us as citizens of this country, after looking inwardly at ourselves then we can ask those given the mandate of leadership how they are doing things. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is one of the most ardent proponents of accountability. We are under the directive of Mr President to submit ourselves for questions to Nigerians and we have to explain ourselves.

“I have the mandate amongst others to explain what the budget and national development objectives are, we have a national development plan, we want to be one of the developed countries of the world by 2050 and what we are doing to ensure that. It was started with the 2024 budget.

“It is being achieved by reducing the deficit and increasing capital spending and we prioritised spending on infrastructure, defence/security and agriculture.

“We have been put on our toes by Mr President, he said openly that Ministers who cannot help in the dreams that Nigerians want may consider stepping aside, so it takes all of us and not just the civil society to come together and fight for the better Nigeria that we all want.”

The special adviser to the president on policy coordination, Hadiza Bala Usman said the president insists that there must be first-hand participation of Nigerians in the verification of the delivery projects of the government.

She said the government would soon relaunch the citizens’ tracker, where Nigerians can track and monitor priority programmes and projects of the government and report back on a dashboard that would be viewed by the President himself.

She said: “Mr President further insists that there needs to be first-hand participation of Nigerians in the verification of the delivery programme and projects of the government.

“Very shortly we’ll be relaunching the citizens’ tracker which will avail Nigerians across the country to track and monitor the list of priority programmes and projects of the government and their status and you can report otherwise, these reports will be viewed by the central delivery and coordination unit, and even importantly, Mr. President will have a dashboard where he’d be able to see and track the progress of implementation of his priority programmes.

“President Tinubu is determined to make Nigeria work for Nigerians, but it doesn’t end with that he is committed to giving Nigerians a voice and empowering them to participate in the governance of their country.”

Country Director Budglt, Gabriel Okeowo said the research findings show that there have been a lot of behavioural changes amongst government officials as a result of the efforts and interventions by Civil Society groups in Nigeria.

He said during the research, stakeholders were unanimous to the fact that the Federal Government, particularly the Executive and Judicial branches have benefited greatly from Civil Society participation in the country.