CSJ Pushes For Agric Sector Budget Monitoring To Improve Service Delivery

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has campaigned for increased budgetary allocation to the agriculture sector at the national and sub-national levels.

This informed a recent two-day capacity strengthening workshop the centre organized for Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation of Nigeria (SWOFON) members on budget and service monitoring.

CSJ is providing technical support to SWOFON to strengthen the campaign for improved access to agriculture equipment and inputs for smallholder women farmers in Nigeria with funding support from the International Budget Partnership.

The training was designed to advocate for the implementation of favorable agriculture policies and budgets that meet the needs of small holder farmers and to influence government national budget priorities to the agricultural sector.

CSJ is also strengthening the capacity of small holder farmers to engage with the government and to expose them to government policy and budget processes at the and national, state and local government levels

It is expected that the women farmers use the training they have received to advocate for the implementation of favorable agriculture policies and budgets.

The two-day training built the capacity of community members to track and analyze national and state government budgets in order to improve resource allocation to the agricultural sector.

SWOFON members were taught the different stakeholders and strategies to engage in the different stages of the budget cycle including lobbying, reviews, analysis, memoranda, multi-media (print, electronic, digital and social media), awareness creation and attending public hearings.

The capacity strengthening entailed that a template responsive to SWOFON’s demands should be made part of the returns from MDAs (ministries, departments and agencies) budget implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting.

Also, reports from SWOFON will provide an opportunity for stakeholders to determine whether budget implementation is on course; whether money has been released and the extent of usage of released funds. SWOFON members were made to understand how they can use the emerging budget monitoring report to engage MDAs and legislative committees for course correction, as well as use in the media for awareness raising and information dissemination. Audit is the last stage of the cycle and being a post mortem exercise, audit provides the opportunity to review budget implementation with a view to providing information and knowledge that can be used for course correction in subsequent budget cycles.

The SWOFON members were made to understand the purpose of budget monitoring and every detail concerning budget monitoring. The women were empowered to the point that they agreed that they could be part of the field monitoring teams of the Ministry of Budget and National Planning and other relevant MDAs. The women were made to understand that beyond the traditional Ministry of Agriculture and its agencies, projects that can benefit SWOFON members can also be found in the budgets of the Governor’s Office, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Women Affairs, Constituency Projects of Legislators, Ministry of Investment, Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development among others.