Gaining Your Trust with Everything We Do

  • Executive Summary

    Nigeria occupies a special place in Africa and in global affairs. It is Africa’s largest economy and 26th in the world. Nigeria has the potential to become a major player in the global economy by virtue of its human and natural endowments. However, as recognized by the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (2017–2020), this potential has remained relatively untapped over the years, partly because of corruption and mismanagement of public finances. The result is poor socio-economic and development indices.

    President Muhammadu Buhari, at his swearing-in in 2015, promised to make the fight against corruption a cardinal part of his administration. His commitment to a full-scale anticorruption agenda was accentuated in May 2016, when the President attended the International Anti-Corruption Summit organized by the government of the United Kingdom. It was on this global stage that he reaffirmed his commitment to strengthening anti-corruption reforms through implementing programs aimed at exposing corruption, punishing the corrupt, providing support to the victims of corruption, and driving out the culture of corruption’.

    Flowing from these commitments, the Federal Government sought to deepen institutional and policy reforms, leading to Nigeria joining the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in July 2016 as the 70th country. The OGP is an international multi-stakeholder initiative focused on improving transparency, accountability, citizen participation, and responsiveness to citizens through technology and innovation. It brings together government and civil society champions of reform who recognize that governments are more likely to be more effective and credible when they open governance to public input and oversight. At the national level, OGP introduces a domestic policy mechanism through which the government and civil society can dialogue. At the international level, it provides a global platform to connect, empower, and support domestic reformers committed to transforming governments and societies through openness.

    The OGP was formally launched in 2011 when the eight (8) founding governments (Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States) endorsed the Open Government Declaration and announced their country action plans. The uniqueness of the OGP process lies in the implementation of the National Action Plan, as it provides an organizing framework for international networking and incentives.

    Between January 2017 to May 2019, the country’s inaugural National Steering Committee oversaw the implementation of the First Nigeria OGP National Action Plan (NAP I). It was comprised of fourteen commitments organized around four thematic areas: fiscal transparency, anti-corruption, access to information, and citizens’ engagement. The Second National Action Plan (NAP II) leverages and incorporates the lessons, insights, and perspectives gained from the last two and a half years of implementing NAP I.

  • Overview of the National Action Plan 2021-2022

The Nigeria OGP multi-stakeholder forum, National Steering Committee (NSC), made up of 42 members was set up with equal membership from government and non-state actors, with a governance arrangement consisting of two substantive Co-Chairs (State and Non-State) and two Incoming Co-Chairs (State and Non-State representatives), reflecting the principle, practice and spirit of co-creation that embodies the Open Government Process. The NSC is made up of representatives of Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as civil society organizations, the organized private sector and professional associations who worked together to co-create this two-year (2017 – 2019) National Action Plan (NAP), with the Ministry of Justice serving as the National Coordinating Secretariat.

The Federal Government appointed the Attorney General of the Federation as the Co-Chair (State representative), and the Federal Ministry of Justice was named by the President as the OGP Coordinating Ministry to implement the commitments and OGP Principles, while the non-state members of the NSC elected the Executive Director of Media Rights Agenda as Co-Chair (Non-State representative). Similarly, the NSC appointed the Minister of State in the Ministry of Budget and National Planning and the Senior Fellow of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) as Incoming Co-Chair (State representative) and Incoming Co-Chair (Non-State representative) respectively.

The NAP aims to deepen and mainstream transparency mechanisms and citizens’ engagement in the management of public resources across all sectors. The first NAP had four thematic areas: (1) promoting fiscal transparency; (2) access to information; (3) anti-corruption and asset disclosure; and, (4) citizen engagement and empowerment.

The four main criteria that guided the design and development of the NAP II are:

  • The commitment must fall within the remit of OGP.
  • Roll-over issues that were not completed in the first NAP but had the potential for transformative change.
  • Issues that have been raised nationally and globally as necessary for deepening the OGP principles, such as inclusivity, service delivery and open legislature.
  • Issues generated from the national consultative process.

The NAP II, an improvement of the first NAP marks out the expected impact, outcome, milestones and activities which deliver the expected impact. The OGP NAP II is driven by the need to make a measurable positive impact on the ordinary citizens of Nigeria by identifying the issues that restrict effective citizens’ participation in government. The NAP II has seven (7) Thematic Areas:

  • Fiscal Transparency
  • Extractive Transparency
  • Anti-Corruption
  • Access to Information
  • Citizens’ Engagement and Empowerment
  • Inclusiveness and Service Delivery.

The NAP II effectively deals with issues of transparency in budgeting, procurement, taxation and natural resource governance, corruption, asset recovery management, freedom of information, communication channels between citizens and government, service delivery and inclusion of under-represented groups in government.

Following the dissolution of the first NSC with the expiration of the NAP I, a second NSC was constituted to provide oversight functions over the implementation of the NAP II. The second NSC is a 20-member committee of equal membership of state actors and non-state actors drawn from CSOs, Organized Private Sector and Trade Unions. The second NSC is led by the Honourable Minister of State for Budget and National Planning as the State Actors Co-chair and the Chief Operations Officer of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group with the Honourable Minister of Sports and Youth Development as the State Actors Incoming Co-chair and the Chief Executive Officer of the Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC).