When on September 8, 2011, the 1st ever service delivery report was unveiled highlighting the public perception index for Public Institutions in Nigeria for 2007-2011, a lot of skepticism were expressed by many persons and institutions. Was it going to be thorough? Will Nigerians vote? Will the group have the human and material resources to carry through such a novel and enormous task? These were few of the numerous questions that the ISDMG had to answer creditably to be able to present this second edition.
From the experience of that edition, and with legislative advancements in our Country, we deployed the full use of the Freedom of Information Act, 2011. Freedom of information requests were sent to over four hundred (400) MDAs. From the responses and information gathered independently from the assessors of the Group, a shortlist of eighty nine (89) Organizations grouped under thirteen (13) categories was drawn.
The unique but broad based criteria used for arriving at the shortlist are:
1. Response to ISDMG’s freedom of Information request
2. Transparency and Fiscal discipline
3. Budget implementation
4. Prompt response to mails
5. Contribution to the Economy
6 Sustainable and people oriented programmes
7 Web visibility
The votes of Nigerians have counted in selecting the twenty-four (24) Organizations that are assessed in this report. It is instructive to know that Organizations who clearly breached the law and did not respond to our Freedom of Information requests are presently slugging it out with our lawyers in court. The decision for legal action was taken primarily for two reasons; Public Institutions owe Nigerians services and also owe Nigerians an account of such services where or not rendered.
We congratulate the MDAs that made it. Some who made it last year still retained their places in the list, Nigerians appreciate them; some dropped out, maybe they did not do so well or other Organizations performed better. And for the new Organizations to this class, we urge them to continue performing for the benefit of Nigeria.