Mr Asishana Okauru, Director General, Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) secretariat,  says the secretariat will begin an induction course for elected governors and their staff from the next dispensation.

 He stated this on Wednesday in Damaturu when he led the Peer Review team of the NGF on a courtesy call on Gov.  Ibrahim Gaidam.

 Okauru said the team was in the state in continuation of its peer review and project inspection exercise.

 He said the training had become necessary because some governors and their secretariat staff needed to be thought the rudiments of governance.

 Okauru, who recently led a team to the U.S. for a conference of the National Governors’ Association of America, said the U.S. also had such programme for newly elected governors.

 The training, he said, was to expose them to the rudiments of governance as well as issues relating to security, time management, financial prudency and how to relate with security agents, the Police and other arms of government.

 According to him, governors in the U.S. do not get to assume office until they go through such induction programme.

 He added that the peer review team which had earlier visited 32 states of the federation were in Yobe to inspect the state government‘s ongoing and completed projects having done so in other states.

 He said they were also in the state to access the connection between projects executed and their impact on the people.

Okauru said that developmental partners such as the Department For International Development, EU, World Bank and the Federal Government had indicated interest in the final report of the exercise.

He said that the exercise was initiative by the 36 serving governors and the Federal Economic Council to encourage healthy competition among the governors.

“The whole objective is to encourage healthy competition among the governors, deepen democracy and good governance, and to also ensure equal development across the country,’’ Okauru said

In his remark, the governor  said the team‘s visit was a moral booster to his administration in its quest for improved service delivery to the people of the state.

He added that the adoption of the peer review initiative by the NGF‘ ‘is undoubtedly a progressive step taken to entrench good governance by evolving common standards of service delivery’’.

 Gaidam noted that the exercise would afford governors the opportunity to compare notes and borrow from each others point of strength.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the team was expected to identify exceptions and best practices in areas of agriculture, health, education, water, budgeting and other developmental issues that could be benchmarked from states visited.

The identified best practices, according to the NGF director general, will be made available to states where they are lacking for replication at the end of the exercise.

“A report on the exercise will be submitted to the governors,” he added.

The team was made up of the media, consultants from various sectors of the economy and NGF secretariat staff.