Connected Development (CODE), a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) has disclosed that it saved the Federal Government more than N15billion by blocking leakages in funded projects in rural communities.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CODE, Hamzat Lawal, made this disclosure on Thursday at a news conference to mark the group’s seventh year anniversary and to unveil the new brand of its “Follow The Money Initiative”.
He said that apart from saving government N15 billion in seven years of its establishment, CODE had also tracked an estimate of 113.6 million dollars in budgeted sums for projects across 181 communities in more than 25 Nigerian states.
“We have improved more than four million lives in the rural areas, practically, we have also ensured that 5million children have gone back to school.
“We did this by ensuring that the children go back to school with the basic education resources we tracked.
“Also in tracking basic healthcare, we have ensured that we saved over 15 million lives in various communities because today they now have access to quality primary health care centres .’’
Lawal said that grassroots communities in Nigeria were constantly deprived of access to basic human needs like healthcare, water, and education in spite of billions of naira of tax generated revenues appropriated for these projects.
He said that the group build capacity of citizens and empower them to hold their elected representatives accountable through the Follow The Money Initiative,
He said that Follow The Money was now in seven countries in Africa namely: Kenya, The Gambia, Cameroun Malawi, Zimbabwe Liberia and Nigeria with Canada at the verge of joining.
He said EFCC agreed to assign a desk officer for CODE to manage and ease communication with the Follow The Money chapter leads across states.
Also speaking Lead Communications and Advocacy, CODE, Kevwe Oghide, said that Follow The Money recently emerged winner of the 2019 Council of Europe’s Democracy Award.
Oghide said that Nigerians suffer because of a broken system which allowed public funds to be siphoned and until public funds begin to work for the good of the people, the dividends of democracy may not be attained.
She called on the media to also help in holding government accountable and to be the voice of the people to ensure that communities get access to social amenities.
She said that Follow The Money unveiled its new corporate identity in line with its mission to track government funds and international aid funding to promote transparency and accountability in governance.
Morakiyo said that CODE empowered youths to track projects in their various rural areas as a form of including youths in the anti-corruption fight and three persons emerged winners.
He said Akinsola Jeremiah from Kwara, Ukeme Anwan from Akwa Ibom and Muhammad Kime from Yobe were the winners and were awarded N100,000 each.
The awardees commended CODE for the privilege and promised to continue to work toward tracking projects in communities to ensure that appropriations were utilised effectively.
