By Chiamaka Egwu
The United Nations Women, UN Women, has called for stronger monitoring and accountability mechanisms to ensure effective implementation of gender-responsive planning and budgeting across Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, of government.
UN Women Country Representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Ms Beatrice Eyong, made the call in Abuja at a capacity-building workshop on Gender-Responsive Planning and Budgeting organised by the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning.
Eyong said Nigeria had taken important steps towards institutionalising gender-responsive planning and budgeting through a partnership with the civil service, but stressed that implementation, monitoring and accountability remained critical to achieving the desired impact.
She said permanent secretaries from almost all ministries, alongside representatives of the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and the National Bureau of Statistics, had already been trained on the initiative.
According to her, the training is now being cascaded to directors and other relevant officers, with plans to extend the process to state governments.
Eyong said the initiative was supported by a five-year plan that provides for annual monitoring and the production of a gender report to track the extent to which MDAs were implementing gender-responsive planning and budgeting.
She disclosed that UN Women and the Federal Government were also finalising a Gender-Responsive Planning and Budgeting framework designed to strengthen monitoring and accountability.
Eyong stressed that gender-responsive budgeting was essential to achieving equitable development, insisting that women must have a meaningful place in governance and decision-making.
Also speaking, the Director of Gender Affairs, Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, Adamu Samaila Web, urged gender focal persons across MDAs to translate the knowledge acquired from the training into improved planning and budget implementation.
Web charged participants to ensure that gender considerations were reflected not only in policy documents but also in the actual allocation and utilisation of public resources.
Representing the Regional Director and Vice President of the African Development Bank, AfDB, Dr Abdul Kamara, Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Specialist, AfDB Nigeria Country Department, Dr Patience Ekechukwu, described gender-responsive budgeting as a strategic instrument for tackling inequality.
She said the approach was critical to ensuring that public resources delivered equitable development outcomes for women, men and vulnerable groups.
The AfDB called for stronger institutional coordination, reliable gender-disaggregated data, clear budgetary commitments, effective monitoring indicators and robust accountability mechanisms.
It also identified the High-Level Working Group on Gender-Responsive Planning and Budgeting, the Country Gender Profile and Roadmap to Equality 2030, as well as stronger collaboration among government institutions and development partners, as key measures for sustaining the initiative.
