Budget tracking

  1. Tracking of Constituency projects of Federal Government

In 2017, ENetSuD tracked 171 Federal Government constituency projects facilitated by Federal lawmakers from Kwara state (no other NGO in the whole Nigeria has tracked this number of constituency projects per year in Kwara state). We found that, though most of the projects were eventually executed after ENetSuD’s monitoring and pressure, in some cases, the majority of those projects were poorly executed in addition to inflation of contract sum. About 15% of the projects tracked by ENetSuD (worth ₦609,791,120) was not easy to verify in terms of quantity, distributions and impacts on citizens, as beneficiaries’ lists were not readily available (read more: https://bit.ly/2smioeN). Out of the 10 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that we tracked their projects in 2017, eight (8) of them eventually complied with the provisions of Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, even though the compliance came only after receiving pre-action notice as part of our preparation for litigation. This is a testimony of our capacity to compel public institutions to account for how taxpayers’ money is spent (read more in our 2017 Annual report: https://bit.ly/381GCtL

  1. The pioneer CSO that initiated tracking of Federal Government Capital projects in Kwara State

Having successfully tracked 171 constituency projects of 2017 in Kwara state that we initially used to test-run our ability, we have shown our expertise and commitment to #FollowKwaraMoney notwithstanding various challenges we are facing. We then graduated from tracking only constituency projects to tracking both capital and constituency projects in Kwara state. Presently, we are tracking more than 500 capital and constituency projects of 2018 in Kwara that worth close to hundred (100) billion naira. We drag MDA(s) that fail to respond to our FOI request(s) to a court of competent jurisdiction for judicial review and to seek mandamus to compel the MDA(s) to comply with our request. So far, we have dragged three (3) MDAs to court, including Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) (read: https://bit.ly/2Rdt8V1), Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) (read: https://bit.ly/35Mvn73, also read https://bit.ly/372cuyk), and Lower Niger River Basin Development Authority (LNRBDA) (read: https://bit.ly/2QNHpsB). We later had an out-of-court settlement with LNRBDA, while our litigations against UBEC and FMARD are still ongoing at the Federal High Court, Ilorin.

  1. The pioneer CSO that started Social Audit in Kwara state

The social audit program was conceived, proposed and approved by the Kwara State Government (KWSG) in order to promote good governance by ensuring the provision of essential goods, services and quality projects to the people, and ensure that money budgeted and released for projects works for the citizens “Kwara money works for Kwarans”. The program also includes training of community-based organizations (CBOs) across the State, empower them to be advocates of good governance through participation in project tracking and monitoring, and make them to always demand for probity and accountability. These will surely improve the dividends of democracy, strengthen the participation of citizens and in turn aid development of Kwara state and Nigeria at large. The KWSG invited ENetSuD as the leading Civil Society Organization (CSO) that will implement the social audit program in Kwara State. The Governor of Kwara State, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, announced this on his official Facebook (http://bit.do/GovernorFacebook) and Twitter (http://bit.do/GovernorTwitter) pages. It was further announced on the official website (http://bit.do/KWSGwebsite) and Facebook page (http://bit.do/KWSGFacebook) of the KWSG, which was then widely published by reputable newspapers like News Agency of Nigeria (http://bit.do/NANNews), Vanguard (http://bit.do/VanguardPaper), Daily Trust (http://bit.do/DailyTrustNews), TODAY (http://bit.do/TODAYNews), and Independent (http://bit.do/IndependentNews), just to mention a few. The KWSG was convinced that ENetSuD is the right CSO to partner with for the exercise based on our impeccable image built overtime in the area of promoting transparency and accountability in the state, especially on project tracking. It is also noteworthy that ENetSuD is not collecting any money from the KWSG to avoid conflict of interest and maintain our independence.