The Akwa Ibom state government said it would commence the publication of its yearly budget from year 2020 on its website so that citizens can have access to it.
The Senior Special Adviser to Gov.Udom
Emmanuel on budget, Mr. Nicholas Ekarika
gave the assurance on Thursday in Uyo during an Open Budget forum organized by Policy Alert in collaboration with ActionAid Nigeria which has the theme, “Corruption, Citizen power and the Budget process.”
Ekarika who said the idea by the state government to publish it’s annual budget was to promote accountability said the hearing of 2020 budget has been completed and noted that it would take care of every facet of the citizens’ needs.
His words, “commencing from January 2020 the budget of the state will be published on the state government website and everybody will have a direct access to the budget.
“Next year’s budget will pass through rigorous processes of town hall meetings as well as wide consultations
In his keynote address, entitled, ‘Budget Tracking as a strategy for the fight against corruption in Akwa Ibom State, ‘Prof. Christopher Ekong of the department of economics, University of Uyo urged citizens to always pay attention to the outcome and output of every budget.
Ekong also encouraged citizens to be active participants in the planning of budget as well as in its tracking so that the chances of padding would be stamped out.
The University Don who lamented over government abandoned projects in the state after allocating huge sums to those projects called on every successive government in the state to form the habbit of completing previous government uncompleted projects before initiating new ones.
Earlier, the coordinator of Policy Alert, Tijah-Bolton Akpan who expressed worry over abandoned projects in the state, said the group would begin to mount pressure on the state government to look into the matter.
He added that the abandoned Ibom Science Park project would have been booming like the Silicon Valley in abroad
