Buhari lists the benefits for Nigeria of joining the Open Government Partnership

President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday received a delegation from the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Support Unit, led by Director General, Sanjay Pradhan, during which he detailed the benefits that Nigeria has from its membership in the transparency body in 2016.

He said that in committing Nigeria to membership in the Open Government Partnership at the London Anti-Corruption Summit, he was very clear about the role the initiative would play in tackling corruption, and since then, "we have developed and implemented two National Open Government Partnership Action Plans.

"By next month (August), I will be signing off on the third action plan, which is in the final stages of development. I look forward to signing off on the document so that we can continue to support the progress of the reforms we have recorded over the past six years of implementation.”

Speaking further, the President described some of the successes the country has had since it began implementing the Open Government Partnership in 2016 as follows:

“Our budgeting processes have become more open, citizen-focused and participatory. In line with the goal of budget 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 the opportunity to provide input. As proof of our progress, Nigeria was ranked among the countries that improved the most on transparency in the latest global survey on the open budget.

“We have made significant progress in beneficial ownership transparency in Nigeria. We produced a Beneficial Ownership Reporting Roadmap in 2016. In December 2019, we established the first Beneficial Ownership Registry in Africa in the extractive industry.In 2020, we amended our laws to extend 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 activity, including illicit financial flows and terrorist financing. We are also confident that the beneficial ownership disclosure policy will support our domestic resource mobilization. »

President Buhari said that 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 our progress on beneficial ownership transparency.

"As part of our commitment to sustaining progress, I have just approved Nigeria's membership in the Beneficial Ownership Leadership Group."

On extractive industry transparency, he said that Nigeria, as a prominent member of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, was recently appointed to chair the global network of 20 countries implementing contract transparency.

"Furthermore, as part of a broader commitment to extractive industry transparency, we passed the Petroleum Industry Act, which introduced sweeping reforms to improve transparent governance and responsible for the oil and gas industry.

“In the area of ​​public procurement, we have established the Nigerian Public Procurement Portal, where citizens can monitor all public procurement processes in a transparent manner. We are currently improving this system to achieve greater efficiency,” he added.

President Buhari said one of the reasons the country has made so much progress is because “we backed our verbal commitments with deliberate action, including OGP implementation in the budget to ensure the 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 citizen participation in governance. We have worked hard to institutionalize OGP by integrating open government practices in our governance systems.”

The President commended the OGP National Team led by Minister of State, Budget and National Planning, Clem Agba, who is the Government Co-Chair, and Civil Society Co-Chair, Tayo Adeloju, for their tireless efforts to advance transparency. and accountability in governance processes.

OGP CEO Mr Pradhan recalled that he was there in London in 2016, when President Buhari joined the 77-member organization as number 70, and described Nigeria as "an excellent performer, one of the most open in the partnership". ."

He...