The President Muhamadu Buhari administration has submitted a letter of intent of Nigeria to join the Global Open Government Partnership. Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami SAN, disclosed this while speaking on Tuesday in Abuja during a meeting of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) with civil society organisations and the media.

He disclosed that the OGP National Action Plan (NAP) was submitted in Paris in 2016, while the country began implementation of the NAP in January 2017 with completion date in June 2019.

Malami, represented by the Senior Adviser to the President on Justice Reform and National OGP Coordinator Barr. Mrs. Juliet Inekakwu, said: “Despite the slow start of implementation of the NAP due to some hickups with putting up the OGP secretariat structure in place, progress and implementation have continued.”

The progress made, according to the AGF, include two public consultative meetings organised by Ministry of Budget and National Planning (MBNP) in Abuja and Lagos to engage civil society, private sector, trade unions and citizens on the proposed 2018 Budget; MDAs budget is being published on the website of the Budget Office of the Federation (BOF) and Budget Implementation Report (BIR) is also published on the site.

In addition, “the Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment through the Presidential Enabling Business Environment council PEBEC has improved the Ease of doing business in Nigeria.

“The recent World Bank Ease of Doing Business Ranking shows Nigeria has moved up by 24 points in the 2017 ranking to 145th in 2018 ranking,” Malami said.

Also speaking, National Team Leader of Engaged Citizens Pillar-ECP-PERL, Dr. Adiya Ode, said that based on the level of work done so far by various CSOs, citizens are better aware and knowledgeable compared to other places, of what is meant to come to them and the level of accountability the citizens can demand from the government.

Ode commended the great milestone achieved by OGP after developing the National Action Plan (NAP) in 2017. She urged OGP to intensify its level of engagement and to ensure that everyone is carried along in its activities.

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