OPEN GOVERNMENT PARTNERSHIP (OGP) AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA.

ABSTRACT: The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on improvinggovernment transparency, accountability and responsiveness to citizens. The open Government Partnership wasformed in September, 2011 to help government work well and renew public trust in public institutions bymaking government more open and responsive to citizens. As a result of this partnership, it has brought abouthigh level of citizen engagement, this has led to the formation of Updated Public Financial Management (PFM)Database by Partnership to Engage Reform and Learn (PERL-ARC) with support from DFID, for the region sheis supporting. The essence of this is to make budget accessible to the public for easy interpretation and analysisto leverage on the opportunities presented by OGP for all round national development. This partnership has alsoafforded stakeholders the platform for budget dissemination. The South East Governors’ Forum in collaborationwith Institute for Development Studies (IDS) disseminated the 2017 federal capital budget performance reportof the South East region. OGP has also led to the formation of Presidential Enabling Business EnvironmentCouncil (PEBEC) with the sole aim of eliminating bureaucratic constraints to doing business in Nigeria. Thefinding of this paper reveals the formation of Ease of Doing Business Council across the five states of the SouthEast for harmonization of taxes and eliminating bottleneck to Ease of Doing Business in the region, the recoveryof N500 Billion so far, the fight against corruption is not done strategically but targeted at perceived enemiesand oppositions, non-reporting of recovered funds or assets by relevant agencies of Government, existence ofmultiple taxation in the South East thereby deterring investors and Poor reporting of contracts. The paperconclude by recommending the following: Asset recovered should be made public and published in appropriatemedia, states in the South East and Nigeria at large should harmonize and update their tax law and Ease ofDoing Business to attract investors and lastly, the fight against corruption should be strategic and not based onparty affiliation or religious background or ethnic sentiment.

Keyword: Open Government, National Development, Accountability, Transparency, Budget Engagement.