Yiaga Africa, a civil society organisation, on Thursday trained the councillors representing the 12 wards of the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), on legislative practices and governance.
The objective of the training is to strengthen the capacity of councillors to respond to governance challenges and improve service delivery to citizens at the ward level.
Dr Ernest Ereke, Coordinator, Yiaga Africa Centre for Legislative Engagement, said the two-day retreat will enhance the councillors’ knowledge and skills on legislative practices and how to relate with their constituents.
“The local government is the closest to the people and the government in which people can relate with easily and we believe it will be best to build the capacity of the people’s representatives at the local government level.
“We want them to deliver on the key mandate of representation of legislation, oversights of government’s policies, projects and programmes.
“They will be exposed to skills on budget and oversight of budget implementation and to ensure that funds appropriated to the Council are judiciously utilised.
“We hope that at the end of the training their capacity on governance, development and democracy in AMAC would have been improved,” he said.
Ereke added that the participants would be exposed to issues related to sexual and gender-based violence in their wards and how to take actions on such cases.
In his opening remarks, Mr Abdullahi Candido, the AMAC Chairman, appreciated the organisation for partnering the Area Council in building the capacities of its legislative arm.
He charged the participants to be open to learning and ensure that the knowledge acquired would be used for the development of the area council.
A participant, Mr Mathias Aliu, Deputy Majority Leader, AMAC Legislative Council and councillor representing Wuse Ward, said the training would enable them to understand legislative techniques and how to impact the lives of their constituents.
Mrs Abiodun Essiet, Special Adviser to the Chairman on I.C.T, Donor Agencies and Civil Societies, added that the training would help them to improve their engagement with citizens and expose them to their statutory roles as councillors.
