Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, has confirmed his participation in this year’s Open Government Week event scheduled to hold at the NAF Conference Centre in Abuja.

According to a letter from the Presidency, the Vice President will be representing President Muhammadu Buhari who is currently out of the country on an official visit to the United States of America. Others who will be in attendance include Nigeria’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN) who serves as the Co-Chair of the Open Government Partnership(OGP) in Nigeria as well as Mr. Edaetan Ojo, founding Director of Media Rights Agenda who is also the civil society Co-Chair of the initiative as well as several development partners among others.

Nigeria is joining the Open Government Partnership (OGP) member countries around the world to host the Open Government Week from7th–11th May 2018. The goal is to create opportunities to learn about Open Government and showcase ways that citizens can interact with and influence the workings of government. The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. It was formally launched in 2011 by 8 founding governments and now has grown exponentially, with more than seventy (70) governments as members.

Nigeria joined the Open Government Partnership (OGP) as the 70th member country and was recently elected to the global steering committee for a period of three years starting from October 2018.

Since its inception, OGP Nigeria in collaboration with relevant government departments, civil society and the private sector, has brought significant reforms in the areas of fiscal transparency, anti-corruption and asset disclosure as well as citizen’s engagement. A National Action Plan (NAP) co-created through a robust consultative process by a group of reformers drawn from civil society and government; consist of fourteen transformative commitments and several activities that are expected to lead to the translation of these commitments to action. Commendable progress has been made in several areas already including open budget, contract transparency, beneficial ownership transparency among others.