#YouthDevelolment: NGO Holds 3 Days Capacity Building Training For 50 Borno Youths

The Center for Advocacy Transparency and Accountability Initiative (CATAI), has on Monday, November 7, 2022, started a three-day capacity-building training for a select 50 young people on understanding their civic rights and the roles they can play to promote youth-centric policies in governance.

The 50 young people are being trained under a four years project, named #SPA-II project which CATAI has recently kick-started in partnership with Action Aid, an international NGO.

CATAI is a Maiduguri-based nongovernmental organisation that promotes transparency and accountability in government.

The trainees will, in the next three days, be drilled in the thematic area of government policy, tax, political education, Gender Responsive Public Service (GRPS), social audit and the freedom of information act (FOI)

Sadiq Muazu, the Executive Director of CATAI,/had in an interview with The Humanitarian Times said the essence of the project was to help young people build capacity on best practices of engaging the government on the issues of good governance promotion.

“We are building the capacities of young people on how they can engage the government and institutions on how they can bring about development that is centred around the youths.

“The training is also to build their capacity on how they can have the skills of influencing the budgetary process and many more.”

He said there is an existing gap in the capacity of many young people in the areas of having access to key information for understanding the roles they can play in the process of budgeting at both the national and subnational levels.

“So we want to address this gap to give that appreciable level of education to young people where they can participate effectively in informing their peers on processes of budgeting and key policies that have to do with young people,” Sadiq said.

The lead facilitator for the training, Blessing Ifemenam of Action Aid, further explained that CATAI and Action Aid are trying through the project to be the active agency of young people to be able to understand the issues of good governance, fragility and climate change generally.

Ms Efemenam, who is Action Aid’s Project Lead for the ‘SPA II’ Project in Born at Action Aid said it is important to help the youth to acquire such capacitation because the context the youth in Maiduguri find themselves is different as a result of the crisis and fragility in their immediate environment.

“We are hoping that when the young people are incapacitated enough they will be able to use that knowledge and skills to go and engage other young people first start taking youth actions to hold duty bearers to account,” she said.

The SPA-II project lead said Borno state, just like Nigeria is a young population in terms of the youth bulge, “so we also need for them to start taking action by holding duty bearers to account especially the coming elections which is a right opportunity for them to engage and present the youth charter of demand.”

Ms Efemenam who had cautioned the youth against “missing opportunity to take actions” said they should seize the current season of budget preparation to make certain demands for the youth so that it can be included or considered in the next budget.

Some of the participants have expressed delight at being part of the three days training which they believed has begun to modify their sense of understanding of what good governance is all about as well as how to be informed advocates for change.

The participants mentioned that they excited with the new knowledge gained in some of the training sessions like “Understanding the Concept of GRPS delivery, Tax Justice and Expanding Fiscal Space for Public Social Spending; Budget Advocacy and Citizens Action for Accountability; Tools for budget Analysis and Expenditure Tracking; public finance and budget tracking etc

At the end of the training, it is expected that the trainees will come up with a communique which will serve as a charter of demand of what the young people need to address in the next budget and also to set agenda for the political class towards the 2023 elections.