With support from donors; Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), and Making All Voices Count (MAVC) the Tracka team has extended its monitoring work to track the 2015 Federal Government Constituency projects in 16 selected states within the federation. To commence the activity, we sent out applications and hired 18 tracking officers within the focus states. The recruitment was shortly followed by a training session to ensure the field officers efficiently deliver on their expectations.
Civil Society Organisations, a representative of the Ministry of Budget and National planning was present as well as some media outlets with a keen interest in budgetary allocations. The two-day capacity building and training session were set up to improve the proficiency of the field officers and to stimulate a synergy between the represented stakeholders for better outcomes. At the end of the workshop, People became accustomed to the budget-making processes and were charged with a cause- to promote civic awareness by monitoring projects and demanding for Open data in the country and particularly at the State levels.
The participants were also requested to share the budget knowledge with their local communities and encouraged to engage their Representatives on a regular basis. At the end of the sessions, they had mastered the creative presentation of data and the usage of our budget tracking tool – Tracka to follow capital provisions of the budget; State and Federal and also report projects in their various localities.Participants were tasked to identify line items of the top 5 ministries, examine them and raise recommendations to the Legislature to guide their judgment while reviewing the proposed budget.
They were also requested to share the budget knowledge with their local communities and encouraged to engage their Representatives on a regular basis. Participants also departed with the understanding of the usage of our budget tracking tool, Tracka and the creative presentation of a budget.
