Minister for State, Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Ikanade Agba, has inaugurated the 2023 Implementation Monitoring Committee (IMC) for the National Economic Council (NEC), on behalf of the Federal government, in Abuja.
While delivering his opening remarks, at the committee’s maiden inaugural meeting, Agba explained that the meeting was an opportunity to share experiences and harvest input to develop a monitoring framework and operational modalities for the 2023 monitoring exercise, as well as, to reconstitute the IMC and inaugurate the 2023 field visit to ascertain the implementation of the NEC resolutions across the States, FCT and relevant MDA’s.
Agba said the IMC was one of the two committees set up to monitor and report the implementation of the resolutions reached at the March 2016 NEC retreat, which was aimed at accelerating socioeconomic and political development through strong intergovernmental relationship.
He noted that “tracking the implementation of the resolutions has been very weak; however, the case of the tracking exercise was taken over by the secretariat in collaboration with the office of the VP in 2019 and 2020”, he added.
He said that in line with the current administration’s drive for continuous evaluation and feedback, it was important to continue the monitoring and evaluation of the implementation status of the NEC resolution in a cost effective and citizen centered manner, and to gain insight into implementation and service delivery at the community level.
“It is my hope that with the inaugural meeting, we’ll be able to provide a platform on how to design, facilitate, and develop a monitoring framework that will involve the citizens at various states and to ensure that the exercise is concluded before the governorship elections.”
The Minister listed members of the IMC, namely: the Honorable Minister of State, Budget and National Planning as chairman, Permanent Secretary Budget and National Planning as member, six Honourable Commissioners representing 6 Geo Political Zones of the country which are Delta, Benue, Lagos, Taraba, Sokoto, and Enugu States, along with the Director, Special Duties Department (BNP) who is a member that also doubles as the secretary of the Committee.
According to Agba, the committee was expected to: i) determine the level of implementation of the agreed 71 NEC retreat resolutions and the yearly monitoring of NEC resolutions, ii)determine the extent to which Federal and State governments have invested towards achieving the objectives of the resolutions of the council to determine progress made at guest planned activities, assess what was planned and what was achieved during project implementation to identify lessons learned and provide an opportunity for peer review as well as acknowledge sharing of good practices that have worked, iii) provide interventions by the national and sub national actors and promote a shared understanding of the policies driving implementation.
Presenting a brief on the IMC, the Director, Department of Special Duties (BNP) Dr Gloria Ahmed, recalled that the Nigerian economy experienced two consecutive sessions of recession in 2016 and in response to the challenges, the NEC Secretariat organized a retreat which was held on the 21st-22nd of March 2016.
She said, the Council at the retreat, adopted 71 resolutions across 8 thematic areas which included: agriculture, solid minerals, investment, industrialization and enabling monitoring policies, infrastructure and services, investing in our people, revenue generation and fiscal stability.
She also recounted that two committees were constituted by the NEC namely: Integrated Monitoring Committee (IMC) chaired by the Honourable Minister of State for Budget & National Planning, and secondly the Implementation Steering Committee (ISC) headed by the Vice President with the mandate to oversee the activities of the IMC.
Dr Ahmed noted that one of the objectives of the IMC was to determine the level of implementation of the agreed 71 NEC retreat resolutions and yearly monitoring of NEC resolutions, among others.
She acknowledged some key achievements recorded by the Council, to include the monitoring of NEC resolutions across 27 states of the federation in 2017; the secretariats including the state commissioners for Budget & Economic planning embarking on the second phase of the monitoring exercise in 2019 across 34 states of the federation with reports of the monitoring exercises submitted and adopted by NEC at the 2017 & 2022 respectively; the development of a joint monitoring model by the IMC to collaborate with the Civil Society Organizations to monitor NEC resolutions; the secretariat’s ability to obtain strategic work plan from states’ MDAs in 2017; the secretariat identification of new resolutions to be monitored.