South -East Hosts Government Share Fair

Mr Asishana Okauru, the Director General of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) said last Thursday that sharing of best practices and experiences among states would accelerate development across the country.

He said this in Enugu at the commencement of an event tagged “ Governance Share Fair’’.

The fair, which would run from May 24 to May 25 was being organised by the forum in collaboration with the UK Department for International Development (DFID) under the auspices of the State Programme for Accountability, Responsiveness and Capability (SPARC).

According to him, the fair is to institutionalise a new culture of peer- learning and knowledge-sharing among state government officials in the South-East Zone of the country.

“We must interact freely, learn from each other and support one another in the areas of reform and innovation in order to perform better.

“Use this opportunity to learn from each other, obtain records and information to build your knowledge base as well as your archives,’’ Okauru said.

He urged government officials at state level to imbibe the habit of sharing experiences, saying that it was critical to the implementation of their development projects.

He said the forum‘s focus was to reduce poverty and enhance development while establishing better relations between government and the citizenry.

Okauru said that the forum was working on a content management site envisioned to be the most credible online repository of governance and related knowledge materials for states of the federation.

He said that the site would contain government‘s policies, data, reports and research findings among others.

Mr Joe Abah, DFID National Programme Officer , told  newsmen  that the fund was collaborating with the NGF to ensure good governance and best practices.

He said that as development partners the issue was not the amount of resources committed to Nigeria but how committed they were towards helping Nigerian government use its resources to improve the lives of the people.

“The issue is not about the amount of resources we bring, the whole sum of donor support in Nigeria account for less than one percent of Gross National Income.

“So if Nigeria is going to develop, it is going to develop with its own resource so we are only here to help as development partners to help Nigeria use its resources better for the benefit of its people,’’ Abah said.

He noted that Nigerians were in a hurry for development, saying that though there were lots to be done in terms of governance, the quality of governance in the country was improving by the day.