FOI Archives - Centre for Social Justice

Capacity Strengthening Of Smallholder Women Farmers In Niger State For Monitoring Of Budgets And Services

Center for Social Justice — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 17:55:52 +0000

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has trained core teams of smallholder women farmers in Niger State on how to monitor agricultural budgets and services.

CSJ is providing technical support to the Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON) to strengthen the campaign for improved access to agriculture equipment and inputs for these women farmers with funding support from the International Budget Partnership.

The project is 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.

The training in Niger State entailed an understanding and engagement of the budget process through planning, implementation and audit. Stakeholders to be engaged at each stage of the budget cycle were listed as well as the strategies for engagement, including reviews, analysis, memoranda, and recommendations, print, electronic and social media articles among other things.

The goals and objectives of each stage of the budget process were clearly explained to the smallholder women farmers. Training modules were produced based on identified capacity profiles of the smallholder women farmers. The women farmers were taught the role of plans and policies as the basis for designing annual budgets. The goals and objectives of each stage of the budget cycle was also established.

CSJ designed a template for monitoring of budgets and services, and explained the template to the women farmers in great detail. The women understood the template and gained mastery of how to deploy the template for monitoring of budget and services.

They were also taught how to deploy the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act to collect information from government agencies.

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Centre for Social Justice Makes FOI Request to Ministry of Petroleum Resources

censoj — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 15:18:03 +0000

In view of the large sums of money spent perennially on the turn-around-maintenance of refineries which ends up turning around the pockets of the contractors and those who award contracts to them, CSJ seeks to know the details of the turn-around contracts. CSJ therefore sent an FOI request to the Minister of Petroleum Resources seeking to get information on:

The amount spent on the turn-around-maintenance of Nigeria’s four refineries in the last ten years;
The name, address and contacts of the contractors who did the turn- around- maintenance;
Copies of the contract evidencing the procurement of the turn-around-maintenance services.

This information will facilitate transparency and accountability and put Nigerians in a better position to discuss issues relating to the privatization of refineries.

Click [ddownload id=”563″ text=”here” style=”link”] to download a copy of the request.

The post Centre for Social Justice Makes FOI Request to Ministry of Petroleum Resources appeared first on Centre for Social Justice .

CSJ Requests Hard Copies of FOI Reports Received From MDAs for 2013.

censoj — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 12:40:12 +0000

To monitor the level of compliance with request for information under the Freedom of Information Act, the Centre for Social Justice, CSJ, has written to the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke, to demand the annual reports from Ministries, Departments, Agencies, MDAs and other public institutions on their compliance efforts.

The CSJ is a non-governmental organization dedicated to the development and implementation of national laws and policies on social rights and justice in accordance with international best practices as well as the promotion of accountability, transparency and popular participation in public expenditure management in democracy.

In the letter signed by its Attorney, Kingsley Nnajiaka, the CSJ gave the Minister seven days within which to respond or risk being dragged before the court for a judicial review of his refusal.

“As you are well aware, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) makes your office its key implementation and oversight institution [s.29 (6)]“, the CSJ said.

“We believe that it is in furtherance of this that the statute imposes a duty on you as the Chief Law Officer of the Federation to collect, latest by the 1st day of February each year, annual reports from Ministries, Departments, Agencies (MDAs) and other public institutions on their compliance efforts [s.29(1)]

“Pursuant to our right under Section 1(1) of the Act, we hereby request hard copies of all the reports you have received from the MDAs for 2013.

“In the alternative, if it has been published online or at a single electronic access point, kindly let us know. We undertake to pay the necessary duplication fees in the event it is still in hard copy,” the groups said.

Applicants for public information, particularly reporters and media organisations, have often found it difficult to get responses from government agencies on issues of public interest.

Where such requests are responded to, they hardly come within the seven days’ time frame required by law.

First Published In Premium Times on March 21, 2014

View other FOI Requests From CSJ here.

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