Monitoring HIV/TB budget would foster Accountability.

Stories by Chimdia Ugoh
In order to achieve the maximum benefits from budget allocations for the Health Sector, especially funds earmarked for HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis (TB), experts have called for the establishment of community groupings in the 774 local government council areas to monitor budget implementations at those levels and the creation of mechanisms that will ensure that public officers are accountable.
Although, going by their approach, most correspondences of the government are tagged 'Top Secret', a coalition o f watchdogs in form of Citizens Action Groups (CAG) can work towards the achievement of good governance and better service delivery system in their communities. These groups can establish frameworks that would pave the way for proper accountability and transparency regarding budget issues and their implementations.
Project Director, Entrepreneurship Development Centre (EDC), African Leadership Forum (ALF), Ayodele Aderinwale who made these recommendations also said there must be incentives for being accountable.
He gave these advise in an address titled Transparency and Accountability: a Key to Development & Good Governance at a 3-Day Training on Budget Monitoring and Tracking for Media organised by Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS) in Ota, Ogun State last week.
According to the project director of the ALF, working within the framework of these groupings will make it possible for citizens to access issues of their rights. Similarly, they could create community values and use them to push for the realisation of their vision while holding government functionaries accountable.
Although, attempts to track these budgets could draw the ire of public officers, the task can still be achieved if community groupings engaging the government constructively, using existing protocols of which Nigeria is signatory to demand for action.
Even on the part of the media, he noted that there could be stumbling blocks in the budget monitoring exercises considering that most newspapers worldwide and other media organisations represent certain interest, “There are ways people work to achieve success. Be thorough, be professional and hope that somebody up there is rational,” Aderinwale said.
He particularly advised media professionals who are pushing for accountability and transparency to avoid the traditional way. “Be creative,” he charged.
In his contribution, the Executive Director, International Press Cent re (IPC) proposed the idea of networking a means to get those in public office to be accountable.
In his presentation titled, Acceptability & the FOI Bill: What Rules for the Media, Arogundade urged the media to be development oriented in terms of the type of reports they do and must relate budge with specific work done.
He noted that a lot of donor money goes to the government and sometimes these fund are duplicated. Hence, Arogundade urged the media to keep their own record, pay attention to non-tax revenues, humanize the figures and ensure that reports focus on the impact of the people