By Sylvester Egede
The USAID Nigeria State Accountability Transparency and Effectiveness (State2State) Activity has within its years of intervention in budget profiling supported the Ebonyi state government to identify the priority areas of the people and thus, intensify actions towards the provision of such amenities.
In a nutshell, USAID State2State Activity has created the opportunities for an open channel between the people and government where the people feed the government back on their priority needs. Records showed that before the intervention of State2State in 2020, Ebonyi State government, as expected has been preparing budgets for each fiscal year but according to a statistical budget implementation report gathered, budget performances in Ebonyi state has been poor.
There are cases of no funding for proposed projects leading to projects abandonment, projects uncompleted or worse still shadow implementation of completed projects.
Having understudied this trend, the USAID State2State Activity aimed to improve the state government’s ability to plan through proper budgeting, raise revenue especially through internal generation, increase society participation in budget implementation and oversee service delivery in the areas of their interest which are Education, Health and Water and Sanitation (WASH).
This has made the trends in budget profiling and Cash Planning in the state to see a lot of changes. For instance, budget allocation increased drastically because the people signified their needs in these sectors and USAID State2State Activity liaised with the government which made the present government to increase its budgetary allocation as follows:
In 2023, Education had 15.35% but in 2024 it is 22.79%. Health got 5.509% in 2023 but has 6.62% in 2024 while WASH in 2023 had 0.97% but increased to 1.13% in 2024.
Speaking on these increments and its impacts on the people, Mr. John Onuoha of the State Primary Healthcare Development Agency said that the key words of the State2State Activity which are Transparency, Accountability and Effectiveness of governance has made the people to key into its programmes.
He said that this fell into the Community Charter of Demands which has greatly enhanced the effectiveness of the People’s Charter of Needs programme of the state government.
The Chief Executive of Hospital Administration in the Ebonyi State Health Management Board, Dr. Nwali Oketa James said that the intervention of State2State has brought new innovations into Ebonyi budgeting and thanked them for the way they have been impacting on the three sectors most importantly in the Health sector.
Aligning with Mr Onuoha, the Head of Department of Planning, Research and Statistics in the Ministry of Water Resources, Mrs. Akam Mary said that the USAID State2State Activity has enhanced her budget preparations most importantly when she learnt about allotting funds for projects only when the time is due
Summarily, the intervention of the USAID State2State Activity has enhanced budget performance in Ebonyi state which has led to timely completion of projects, zero tolerance for uncompleted projects and abandoned projects, a taboo in Ebonyi state. No wonder, the State2State Team Lead in Ebonyi state, Dr. Sam Onyia harped on proper budget profiling and cash planning for all MDAs so as to have a good budget performance at the end the fiscal year.