CSJ Starts Implementation of Citizens Budget Component Of SFTAS Project

The Centre for Social Justice is implementing the Technical Assistance (TA) component of the World Bank’s States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) programme in selected states of the federation.

The objective of the World Bank’s SFTAS Programme is to promote focus and attention of Nigerian States towards improvement of their public finance management systems, processes and institutions. Such support is aimed at strengthening fiscal transparency to help build trust in government, facilitating accountability in public resource management and ensuring sustainability in the participating states.

The SFTAS Programme is a hybrid with two components of activities that support Nigerian states to achieve key result areas of the program: i. ‘Results-based’ component – a Performance for Results (PforR) or performance-based financing component and ii. Technical assistance component – for states and selected national-level institutions.

CSJ will support the states in setting up permanent participatory budget processes and cycles as well as develop, design and publish Citizens Budget.

With the project, CSJ will conduct desk research on existing participatory budget processes in Nigeria with a view to provide support to states for the adoption of best practises. And using a train the trainer approach, CSJ will provide hands-on training to state officials selected for training by the Nigerian OGP Secretariat on the details of the Citizens Budget Template.

The Lead Director of CSJ, Eze Onyekpere said that the project will create opportunities for citizens participation in not just budget preparation but in implementation and audit as these are all parts of the budgeting process.