A mere 3% of the decisions and proposals made at the 7th Governors' Forum have been put into action, according to the study conducted by the civil society group.
Civil society activist Edmund Yakani, Executive Director of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), expressed concern over the lack of progress, particularly on resolutions aimed at preventing communal violence.
Yakani emphasized that while some governors showed promise in addressing communal violence, the majority have failed to deliver on the forum’s commitments.
“Only 3% of the previous state governors and chief administrators' resolutions and recommendations were implemented, and with these recommendations and resolutions around the prevention of armed communal violence at states and administrative areas, we have seen good performance of some state governors and chief administrative areas in the prevention of deadly communal violence at states and administrative areas,” said Yakani.
He attributed the slow implementation to internal power struggles, as evidenced by the evaluation and observation of the CEPO's forum watch initiated.
"Over 90% of our state governors are wasting their time in mitigating tensions of power struggle between governor and deputy governor, and this has affected some state cabinet even not to perform effectively,” he stated.
In addition to political infighting, Yakani criticized the mismanagement of state revenues, alleging that some governors and chief administrators are prioritizing personal gain over the public interest.
“Some state governors and chief administrators have paralyzed the state revenue authority's performance in generating the state's revenue in a transparent and accountable manner, simply because governors are milking state revenue, and some chief administrators are also milking administrative area revenue for their personal gain, not for the best interest of our citizens,” Yakani added.
Out of the 10 states and three administrative areas, CEPO only singled out Western Bahr el Ghazal state as the only state which has performed well, followed by the current Central Equatoria state’s governor who is investigating the performance of the previous governor.
“The only state that we have a bit of credible information that they have shown how PIT is collected and revenue generated is Western Bahr el Ghazal State, but the rest of the states we have not seen,” Yakani stated.
“Part of a best practice that we have seen coming out is the Central Equatoria incumbent governor investigating the performance of the previous governor in revenue collection.”
Yakani urged the Office of the President to establish a transparent monitoring mechanism to evaluate the performance of governors and administrators.
“We are urging the office of the president, which is in charge of this forum, to commission an urgent, transparent, and inclusive commission, and we civil society need to be engaged in evaluating the state governors and chief administrators' performance in delivering the agreed-upon resolution and recommendation of the Seventh Governors Forum.”
The 7th Governors' Forum was held in December 2023, during which several resolutions and recommendations were adopted, focusing primarily on issues such as addressing communal violence, intergovernmental relations, elections, humanitarian affairs, and rights of expression.