Issues in Kaduna state service delivery
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(Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai)
NIGERIA
Communiqué issued at the end of one-day reflection session with stakeholders on governance and service delivery in Kaduna State, facilitated by PERL-ECP has raised concerns about policy implementation and service delivery in Kaduna State.
If well implemented, budget under one roof is an initiative that suppose to address the issue of project duplication by the three tiers of government – Federal, state and local government and at the same time, help the citizens to track all projects around them irrespective of which tier of government is executing them.
According to that communique, the mid-year budget performance released by the state government was not segregated according to sectors, and not many citizens were involved in the Community Development Charter (CDC) process from the communities while some government officials were not committed to the CDC process.
CDC is a tool developed for locals to make demands from their policymakers especially at the local government level by way of prioritising their needs in the interest of their community rather than individual’s request.
The communique read in part, “it was observed that there were multiplicity of taxation such as introduction of hotel occupancy and restaurant consumption tax, constitutional issues, inefficiency of tax processes, poor tax accountability, collection inefficiency particularly at the grassroots level and inadequate transparency towards reporting tax collection by the state government to the appropriate authority especially the state house of assembly before being made public.
“Further on tax issues, the participants noted the inappropriate manner of approach to road users especially vehicles and motorcyclists in the interpretation of vehicle particulars and drivers license inspection, the Tax Appeal Committee yet to be inaugurated and inadequate education of collection officers especially KASTLEA and KADGIS.
“On issues affecting Rural and Community Development around service delivery, it was observed that there was inadequate synergy and weak coordination with other relevant MDAs during planning and implementation, inadequate capacity of community development officers, inadequate involvement of benefiting communities in planning and implementation of the intervention leading to lack of ownership, and institutional instability.
“On health issues, it was established that most of the renovated facilities were below standard, inadequate health personnel, poor retraining of personnel on ground.
“In education, it was observed that there were inadequate involvement of relevant stakeholders like School Base Management Committees (SBMCs), NUT, and PTA in decision making as well as inadequate teachers while some unqualified teachers were recruited into the system, poor monitoring and evaluation by government officials, paucity of funds in tertiary education which had increase the number of out school children after basic education.”