March 06, (THEWILL) – Nigerian youths have been advised to explore Open Government Partnership, OGP, to enhance the ideals of transparency and accountability in public sector governance.
This was the position largely canvassed by discussants during a Town Hall Meeting themed “Youth Cafe: let’s harvest your thoughts,” held at the Nigeria Bible Translation Trust, Jos, over the weekend.
The event, which also sought to build youth capacity, confidence, and sense of responsibility on matters that affect their peer interest and the general community, also encouraged the youths to participate in governance by getting involved and contributing to the budgeting process by identifying their community needs and engage policy makers and representatives in government.
The youth engagement exercise also discouraged the youth from being petty and cheap by confronting their representatives with personal menial requests for personal immediate satisfaction. Rather, according to the discussants, youths should always chase enduring values, and represent class or group interests, which can receive policy and budgetary attention.
With the participants exposed to open government partnership as a global trend being domesticated at state and municipal levels, and urged to go out and preach the trend and its ideals, other values as bulwarks of modern public governance include citizen education, mass mobilization, popular participation, integrity, collaboration, dialogue, engagement, and articulation of interests to achieve transparency and effectiveness in governance.
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