The Nigerian Government has applauded the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) policy, expressing optimism that it would give the sub-regional body a high-level direction to deliver effective policies, programmes and projects that would enhance the welfare of citizens.
It also said that the document would strengthen implementation of ECOWAS policy by bridging the gap in policy, planning and execution through an effective M&E framework.
Nigerian Government’s position was contained in a statement delivered by the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Ikanade Agba, on Tuesday at the virtual minsterial meeting on ECOWAS M&E policy.
Agba, however, placed before the meeting Nigeria’s suggestions to strengthen and make much more robust the draft policy.
He said there was the need to have a system and framework that were compliant with the culture, orientations and practices that were common to the sub-region.
According to him, “it should have a home grown focus in terms of delivery.”
He said the system and framework should promote and leverage on technologies to drive the policy implementation.
“This is in view of the post-COVID situation, which highlights the limitations of strategies that depend on physical contact and manual operators.”
He stated further: “The policy statement should be aligned to a strong theory of change that will ensure the policy statements and recommendations are made from sound logic and theory.
“There should be provided a section on the theory of change within the document if possible.”
He continued: “Finally, the ECOWAS may wish to note that the Government of Nigeria has put in place an M&E framework since 2010 to track the implementation of the Nigeria Vision 2020, which terminated with the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017 – 2020.
“We believe the implementation of the framework had assisted the country in the quick exit out of recession in 2015 – 2016 and the move from 46th position in the world in 2010 to the 26th position in terms of normal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by the year 2020.”
He said a home grown National M&E policy had been developed through constitutive process and would be presented to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) hopefully in February 2021, pointing out that a legislation backing it up could be passed within the year.
He said a National M&E strategy (2021 – 2025) would support the implementation of the NM&E policy and the delivery of the Nigeria’s Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP) 2021-2025.
He stated that there would be a compendium of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for all the Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to guide the tracking of the delivery of Government’s policies, programmes and projects by the MDAs.
Agba said that there were guidelines and templates to guide the implementation of M&E in future, as well as mechanism for the evaluation of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the areas of SDG3 (Health) & SDG4 (Education).
According to him “The evaluation is being done in collaboration with UNICEF. The evaluation is the first initiative by a country in the global South to commence the process of evaluation of the SGDs to provide empirical evidence on the performance of the SDGs.”
“The other country to commence the same process is Finland in the global North,” he added.
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