Youth in Governance
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”
“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.