Bukola Afeni
The Executive Director Of Connected Development Hamzat Lawal, has called on the legislators to host a public hearing on how COVID-19 resources were spent.
He disclosed this at the launch of 2020 annual report.
According to him, the public need to be aware of the how the funds were disbursed.
He added that Connected Development discovered corruption in terms of contract execution during the pandemic.”We have written several Freedom of Information letters but we have not received answers to all our response from most of the agencies.We have not gotten breakdown from Presidential task force on how much was mobilized, and the form of disbursement. We all saw the videos of how people ransacked ware houses with COVID-19 food items that were meant to be distributed to the people. The Politicians kept some of the items so as to distribute them during political season.”
He further charged the President to show leadership skills in tackling the problem of insecurity in the country.
“The country is currently in an unprecedented time, we are experiencing insecurity across the country.There has been increase in hate speech, and fake news. This has been a threat to national security. We should stop blaming only the PresidentWe know we had all this issues in 2015 before voting him into power, and in 2019 we voted him again, so we are sick and tired of hearing about this challenges”.” From this moment, we want to hear solutions and how every Nigerian can become part of the solution. I believe that each and every Nigerian is also part of the solution, particularly the young people.We want the President to dialogue with Nigerians, and the legislative arm before banning Twitter.”
The Executive Director of Connected Development, also charged the Federal Government to maintain peace, so that citizens can enjoy the dividends of democracy.
The Community Engagement Director, Busayo Morakinyo, said during COVID-19 pandemic, Follow the Money tracked 97 Billion naira, and impacted communities around the world.
“CODE’s Follow The Money ensured that every Kobo disbursed to cushion the effects of COVID-19 on the citizens was used appropriately and properly accounted. We accelerated the publication of the first ever National Emergency Procurement Policies( EEP ) by the Bureau of Public Procurement( BPP) and directly impacted over 4.8 million lives.
He further added that CODE underwent partnership with Budgit, a fiscal transparency organization, and expanded operations to six African countries.
” The countries are Cameroon, Ghana, Malawi,Sierra Leone, Liberia. Malawi President sacked the Minister of Labour for utilizing COVID-19 funds for personal purpose. The consistence gap across countries is poor procurement processes, fund embezzlement and lack of government transparency.”
Senior Program Manager Lucy James Abagi, stated that CODE promoted gender inclusion in all spheres of the Nigerian society especially in leadership and governance through advocacy and intervention programs.
“We adopted a unique approach to tackle the menace of poor state of education in the country, using Fufore LGA and Yola south LGA in Adamawa state. A total of 10000 residence were successfully sensitized on the need to increase girl-child enrollment and retention in schools. This set a new precedence as the traditional leaders, community chief, women and girls were trained on how to advance girl-child enrollment in schools and reduce girl-child marriage.”
She said during the pandemic, there was increase in Gender based violence cases in 24 states, which cause national revolt which several civil society organization spoke against it.
