On Thursday, President Muhammadu Buhari received a delegation from the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Support Unit, led by its CEO, Dr. Sanjay Pradhan. During the meeting, he listed the benefits Nigeria has reaped as a result of the country’s 2016 membership in the transparency organisation.
At the London Anti-Corruption Summit, when he pledged Nigeria’s membership in the Open Government Partnership, he made it very clear what role the programme would play in the fight against corruption. Since then, he stated, “we have developed and implemented two National Action Plans on the Open Government Partnership.”
“By next month (in August), I will sign the third Action Plan, which is in the final stages of development. I am eager to sign the document so that we can continue to sustain the progress of reforms that we have recorded in the past six years of implementation.”
Speaking further, the President outlined some of the successes that the country has recorded since it began to implement the Open Government Partnership in 2016 as follows:
“Our budgeting processes have become more open, citizens-centred and participatory. In accordance with the objective of fiscal transparency, all stakeholders, including the public are involved in the country’s budget making process, have access to the details of our budgets, and have opportunity to make inputs into it. As a proof of our progress, Nigeria was ranked among the best improved countries for transparency in the latest global Open Budget Survey.
“We have made significant progress in the beneficial ownership transparency in Nigeria. We produced a roadmap of Beneficial Ownership Reporting in 2016. By December 2019, we established Africa’s first Beneficial Ownership Register in the extractive industry. In 2020, we amended our laws to expand Beneficial Ownership Reporting to all sectors of the economy.
“We are currently building a robust national Beneficial Ownership Database, which will be deployed to combat global criminal activities including illicit financial flows and terrorism financing. We are equally convinced the Beneficial Ownership disclosure policy will support our domestic resource mobilization.”
President Buhari also said as a government, “We are encouraged that, at the last OGP Global Summit in Seoul, South Korea, Nigeria won the OGP Impact Award for our commitment and progress on Beneficial Ownership Transparency.
“As part of our commitment to sustain the progress, I have just approved Nigeria’s membership of the Beneficial Ownership Leadership Group.”
Regarding contract openness in the extractive industries, he claimed that Nigeria, a key participant in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, has recently been named chair of the international network of 20 nations implementing contract transparency.
“Also, as part of a broader commitment to extractive industry transparency, we passed the Petroleum Industry Act which introduced sweeping reforms to enhance transparent and accountable governance of the oil and gas industry.
“In public procurement, we have established the Nigerian Procurement Portal, where citizens can monitor all government procurement processes in a transparent manner. We are currently improving this system to achieve greater effectiveness,” he added.
President Buhari said one of the reasons the country has made this much progress is because “we have backed our verbal commitments with deliberate action, by including OGP implementation in the national budget to ensure sustainability of the partnership in Nigeria.
“With these steps we have taken, our administration will bequeath to the next government a culture of transparency, accountability and citizens’ participation in governance. We have worked hard to institutionalise the OGP by mainstreaming open government practices across our governance systems.”
The President commended the national OGP team led by Minister of State, Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Agba, who is the Government Co-Chair, and the Civil Society Co-Chair Dr. Tayo Adeloju for their relentless efforts in advancing transparency and accountability in governance processes.
President Buhari pledged his support for the 77-member group as Number 70 while OGP CEO Pradhan recalled being present and praised Nigeria as “an excellent performer, one of the most open across the partnership.”
He praised Nigeria for making its budget, contracts, procurement, and extractive industries more transparent.
He pushed for additional changes to audit disclosure, the creation of an E-procurement platform, and the institutionalisation of OGP, among other things.
Nigeria is a nation with “open hearts, open arms of friendship and partnership,” according to Pradhan.