Umar Abdullahi 
USAID, State2State in collaboration with Sokoto State Government on the implementation of Open Government Partnership (OGP), and community participation in state budget procedures and implementations.
The Permanent Secretary, Sokoto State Ministry for Information and Orientation, Alhaji Ibrahim Muhammad stated to newsmen during a 2-day workshop organized by USAID-State2State held at Soul Care Hotel, Sokoto.
Muhammad said the state Ministry of Information has a crucial role to play in the implementation of OGP which is about accountability, and prudence in the management of resources.
He explained that the state government has already signed an MoU with State2State to essentially provide open access to government activities, programmes and projects.
“This means when you talk about openness, you talk about open access to information and projects as there is no better way to have this access than having to partner with the Ministry of Information and Orientation being the ministry responsible for the dissemination of information to the general public.
“Essentially for this part, we are expected to popularise projects and some of the positive achievements of the state government.
“With this commitment, the people of Sokoto State will have readily available information regarding the performance and activities of the government.
“It will interest you that OGP has been signed by quite a number of states although we have OGP local and OGP global and Sokoto signed OGP local.
He noted that the OGP action plan is the first step of SAPU and when we reach SAPU 2, whereby we will develop a new context of some of the deliberate.
We expected to achieve at the state in terms of openness in physical responsibility issues regarding budget, transparency, and citizen engagement.
He noted that the role of the ministry toward enlightening the general public on the importance of OGP the need to key into the OGP, and how they can be partners to open budget processes so that people in communities will have their priorities incorporated in the budget.
Hitherto, the OGP followed up and ensured the government committed itself to addressing the particular needs of the people in their respective communities.
