The Cloneshouse team, led by its Chief Executive Director, Oludotun Babayemi, and Director of Operations, Noelle Uloko, paid a courtesy visit to the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning (FMBEP) MEL Department on Tuesday, the 8th of August, 2023, to further strengthen our collaboration with the Ministry. We met with the FMBEP team, which included the Director of the M&E Department- Mr. Usman Abdulkadir, the Deputy Director of the M&E Department – Mrs. Olasumbo Yakub, and another Deputy Director, Mrs. Jessica Agu.
The Director – Mr. Usman Abdulkadir, stated that they were open to collaborating with Cloneshouse, especially in reviewing the policies they implemented since our 2019 readiness assessment and the organizational capacity assessment they had at that time, stating categorically that the Department required funds and in need of organizations that were interested in funding the work of the Department.
The Chief Executive Officer (Cloneshouse), Mr. Oludotun Babayemi, responded to the Director about our proposed 5-year strategy with the MEL department of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, which will entail activities that bring local innovation, indigenous knowledge, and local voices in evaluation, transformation, and strengthening evaluation in Nigeria; including involving civil society, parliamentarians, and emerging evaluators in the evaluation profession; and building evaluation capacity through stronger national M&E systems, aligning with the Nigeria Monitoring and Evaluation Policy, and the new United Nations General Assembly resolution at the 69th plenary meeting of the seventy-seventh General Assembly.
The Deputy Director, Mrs. Olasumbo Yakub, appreciated the Cloneshouse team for recommending her in 2018 to participate in the Global Parliamentarian Conference on Development Evaluation held in Sri- Lanka, Colombo.
Mrs Yakub also mentioned the fact that Cloneshouse independently decided to do a readiness assessment of Nigeria’s M&E system and was able to share the findings with the Ministry.
The results of the Nigeria Readiness Assessment 2019 report gave us an insight into what our gaps in the Ministry were and how those gaps could be addressed and filled. Indeed, the Cloneshouse Nigeria Readiness Assessment 2019 publication helped the Department draft the National Monitoring and Evaluation Policy. Our findings were encapsulated in the policy.
– Mrs Olasumbo Yakub (Deputy Director, MEL Department, FMBEP)
Mrs. Yakub further added that Cloneshouse’s weekly Newsletters, free training, bi-weekly brown bags, and online courses had benefited the staff of the MEL department and that our resources are a learning point for the staff, stating that Cloneshouse is now a household name in the Department.
The Director of Operations (Cloneshouse), Noelle Uloko, stated that the activities designed in the five-year strategy would include training/Sensitization of MEL officers at MDAs, mentorship support to MEL officers at MDAs, consultative meetings with MEL officers at MDAs, peer Review amongst MEL officers of MDAs, joint M&E sessions with MEL officers, and supporting funding-raising opportunities for the FMBEP MEL department from international organization, tertiary institutions, and MDAs that we are targeting.
In the image above, from left to right:
Mr. Steven Adeboye (Cloneshouse), Ms. Jessica Agu (FMBEP), Ms. Rachael Okoronkwo (Cloneshouse), Ms. Kahdija Yayaha (Cloneshouse), Dir. Usman Abdulkadir (FMBEP), Dep. Dir. Olasumbo Yakub (FMBEP), Ms. Noelle Uloko (Cloneshouse), Mr. Oludotun Babayemi (Cloneshouse).
