Nigerian government has been called upon to cut unnecessary spending, waste and maximise the funds at its disposal for the benefit of the people.
The Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC) which stated this, said all programmes, policies and projects initiated by the government should be people oriented and focus on meeting the needs of the citizens.
The centre’s senior programme advisor, Ife Olatunji-David made the call in Ado Ekiti, the state capital at the end of a five-day sub-national Public Procurement BootCamp organized by centre and supported by the MacArthur Foundation.
Olatunji-David said when public funds which are from the taxpayers’ money are maximized, losses and wastes will be curbed and the citizens will be better for it.
She said, “They should focus on the citizens because the money is taxes from the citizens so it should not be wasted and used to fund personal projects but should be going towards the prosperity of the citizens and the state, service delivery (schools, hospitals, good roads).
“Yes we have scarce resources and things are not working as we used to have them before, yet we need to manage our small resources so that we can get maximum impact for the small money. So we need to cut down on loss and the only way to do that is to monitor and evaluate these projects properly.
“Because, if we are giving money and we are not monitoring and evaluating what the money is going for , there will be a lot of loss. So there is the need to curb loss and waste. Let us monitor whether we want to do new projects, the project we are already doing should be monitored properly and ensure that people are compliant and carry out projects to specification. Let’s ensure that corruption is curbed so that public funds will not be wasted by financing corruption.
“When we are maximising public funds and the little funds we have, it will go a long way and the citizens will be happy when they see the government doing all these.”
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