Youth in Governance Crucial for Service Delivery- Boss Mustapha
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Boss Mustapha, has reiterated his support for youth integration in the process of governance as it serves as an initiative that will foster development in the country.
The SGF who was represented by Musa Umar Abdullahi, made this known during the citizen’s engagement organised by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms in collaboration with the Global Centre for Human Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Development on Tuesday, in Abuja,
Boss said the younger generation must also be integrated into the process that will ensure good governance and service delivery for the benefit of national development. The citizens must therefore be encouraged to speak out to contribute to attaining good governance
“We will continue to support this initiative so that we can facilitate more collaboration and partnership with relevant Federal Government MDA’s, to ensure the implementation of the various projects proposed to support job creation and poverty reduction”
“We are also establishing a mechanism that would aid our information dissemination, and hope that we take advantage of it, own the process and ensure its continuity and sustainability” he added.
However, Director General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms, Mr Dasuki Arabi, the chief host, noted that youths have the right to checkmate government and other related reforms as it is part of the citizenry responsibility of Nigerians to foster good governance.
“Citizens should be aware that through Open Government Partnership, OGP, they have the right to check government, ensure government deploy funds where they are needed, and collectively this action we lead to improvement in economy”
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“This is one of the ways we have adopted which is impacting on the International model to engage citizens and the coming of this government has laid more emphasis on engaging the citizens, which is why we have this platform for citizen engagement.
“We believe this is one of our own contributions as one of the leaders of reforms at the federal level to lay the foundation for creation of those platforms that will serve as a channel for citizen engagement to ensure good governance.” He added.
Mr Dasuki also revealed that, the engagement is aimed at getting feedbacks from the previous engagements and that the commission is on the verge of extending the initiative to the State and Local government level.
“This is the second engagement that we’re doing and what we’re doing today is to get feedback from the outcome of the first engagement that we have done. And we have formed groups, we have formed cells and process of engagement. From here, we want to get down to the state and local government levels for engagement with citizens.”
“So far it is excellent, but you can see the membership is small in size, because we have just commenced, but we’re hoping as we move forward it will be better than this”. He assured.
Also, Director General of the Global Centre for Human Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Development, GLOCHEED, Mrs. Rose Gyar, also described the initiative as a laudable one. Saying the idea of the engagement is to help sensitize citizens towards understanding their roles in fostering good governance.
“This engagement will enable us to understand our own roles as citizens in governance, our own roles as citizens in nation-building and then work together with state actors o ensures that policies and programmes of government are achieved.”
While emphasising on the need for citizens to participate in governance, she noted that the initiative will play an essential in making leaders accountable.
By PRNigeria
