From Umar Ado Sokoto
In Sokoto,a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) ,global youth ready to lead Africa has trained youth in Sokoto and other six states to monitor projects and programmes of States Government for accountability and prudent .
Godbless Otubure ,the global president at ready to lead Africa said the measure was aimed at to checkmate and possibly pressurise various state governors to separate and execute more developmental projects in their local government areas .
Addressing participants during the training programmes in Sokoto State,Otubure , says the project currently implementing in Sokoto State is part of the nationwide accountability project graciously funded from Open Society foundation for West Africa (CEWA).
He stated that already, similar training exercise was conducted at Ekiti,Pleteau,Ebonyi ,Akwa Ibon and Gombe respectively.
The trained youth were saddle with the responsibility of monitoring and reporting what the state government is doing at their respective areas by using a civic technologies such as mobile phones and web apps specially developed for covering campaign promises .
Residence and Sokoto State indigenes residing within and in diaspora can monitor the current state government activities as the technologies were available at App store and play store for them to download.
The project is empowering young people across the different states to be able to follow the campaign pledges made to electorates during electioneering campaign by governorship candidates during 2023 general elections .
The goals of the project according to the president is to educate people that democracy is beyond voting ,saying that voting is just one aspect of democracy and for us to have a sustainable, productive and responsive democracy ,citizens must holds government accountable .
According to him,political party manifestoes can no longer be just document that is written by consultant just to get votes .
While emphasising that the project is organising youth across every local government areas in the state where the project is being implementing ,the youth are to reports what the government is doing in their respective local government areas by using a civic technology such as mobile and web apps .
The project would be implemented and handle by the people living in their respective communities ,parts of their responsibilities were to provide data as its relate to what government is doing .
The project was aimed to achieve and prevent governors from focusing on executing developmental projects in only their local government origin as they were not only voted into office by only their community .
Government must prioritize separating developmental works across all the LGAs of the state.
While failures of governors toward ensuring equal distributions of the developmental works in their states has become one of the biggest challenges in the present day Nigeria’s democracy .
“This problem is contributing serious problems to our democracy and many local government were complaining that for 4 years they have seen the present of state government in their area.
To solve this problem ,the project empowered youth on skills of monitoring and data coalition of all the projects been executing in their respective community on daily ,weekly and monthly bases for onward presentation to the governor of the state .
While assures that the project is initiated against or which hurt state governors but neither it will create awareness among citizens ,promote and add impetus to those in the helm of the state affairs .
The president argued that Nigerians have made a mistakes in 1999 when democracy was left to no body as such the politicians ran the country the way they liked and without accountability .
” We would praise those governors who perform good at the end of the year and shame those who did not do good ,that is the purpose of democracy “.
In his remarks,the Sokoto State Chairman Global Youth ready to lead Africa ,Mustapha Aliyu assured to make best use of the opportunity to work toward ensuring accountability in the governance of the state .
Aliyu also call on the participants to educate other youth at home on the goals and importance of the group.
