HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TO LAUNCH ‘NASS EYES’ FOR EFFECTIVE OVERSIGHT ON MDAs -KALU 13-11-23
By Sadiq Aminu The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu, has says the National Assembly will soon launch an application known as ‘NASS Eyes’ to monitor budget transparency and implementation by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government.
Kalu who dropped the hints during a courtesy call on him by the management team of AFRILABS, a high-tech company, said the mechanism is driven by the conscious effort of the parliament to effectively check the performance of budgetary allocations to the agencies of government.
The monitoring he said, will also include, adherence to the principle of federal character by the affected MDAs.
“So, while you think about the economic and entrepreneurial space, also think about innovations in leadership, through technology. How do we employ that in our oversight functions, so that we can be in our offices, heading our committees and also monitoring what is happening in various Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government; so that our oversight functions will not only be based on the bundles of papers submitted to us on the day we visit these MDAs, but a continuous analysis of what they are doing, day in, day out.
“A dashboard that is in the Parliament to see what is being captured in the MDAs will inform members of the Parliament better, so by the time they visit it, they would have gotten sufficient information that would help them oversight tax payers money more efficiently. It is something we must think about.
Kalu also underscored the need for the deployment of technology in the oversight functions of the parliament, saying it would not only gauge the efforts of the government agencies but also give the needed boost to E-Parlaiment for the overall benefits of the people.
The Executive Director of AFRILABS Mrs. Anna Ekeledo informed the Deputy Speaker that their company is providing multilateral support systems to many organizations across the African hemispheres in terms of capacity building, among others.