It’s been an interesting year already for the Follow The Money (FTM) Movement. In January, we officially launched in The New Gambia. In the following month, we were in Kenya to do the same. All with the goal of spreading the adaptation of the FTM model across the continent so that citizens can hold their governments to account and facilitate development in their communities.

After weeks of planning and strategizing, the team were in Nairobi, Kenya on 10 February 2018 for Follow The Money Kenya Workshop and Launch, through a partnership with the Slums Information Development and Resource Centres (SIDAREC) – a youth/children development project operating in the slums of Nairobi. SIDAREC playing a host to Follow The Money Kenya won the ONE Africa Award in 2008, for her rigorous development driven activities in Kenyan slums, just like we won the same award 8 years later.

The workshop which started by 11 am on the aforementioned date was attended by over 100 participants. In participation included the Chief Executive of Connected Development, Hamzat B Lawal; Executive Director of SIDAREC, Lucy Mukami; Member of Imara Daima County Assembly, Hon. Ken Obuya; and a cross section of other stakeholders in community development and open government work. It was held at SIDAREC office at Imara Daima and was geared toward building the capacity of the participants on the FTM processes, for domestication in Kenya. The sessions in the workshop ranged from taking them through Follow The Money workflow; data mining to activate campaigns; how to leverage on information sharing partnerships to access and amplify information; the procedure for organizing community outreach and town hall meetings; as well as a discussion on the political economy of open government in Kenya and operationalization of Article 35 (Access to Information provision in the Kenyan 2010 Constitution).

While making a presentation at the workshop

Other side attractions during our visit to Kenya included a community outreach to Mukuru kwa Njenga Slum and a radio programme on citizen engagement, active citizenry and social accountability on 99.9 Ghetto FM – a community mobilization signature of SIDAREC.

The most important aspect of the launch/workshop was that it was held in a community/slum away from being held in an extravagant hotel in Nairobi, a traditional fashion exhibited by some organizations, in a way to unintentionally mainstream the development buzz malcontents. Doing this in a community we believe will strengthen local ownership of the initiative. In addition, a Member of County Assembly was in participation committing to facilitating government spending data availability as concerns the Ward Development Fund, County Development Fund etc.

At the end of the workshop, Follow The Money Kenya was officially commissioned. Its hoped that all things being equal, the Kenya Chapter will leverage on several social accountability tools already existing in the country such as access to information provision in the constitution to hit the ground running, identifying potential funds intended for communities and deploying the FTM strategies to make sure open government and service delivery work in Kenyan communities.

Kenya’s multi-party democracy realization journey was a back-breaking one and it’s believed Follow The Money Kenya will ensure the achievement of democracy dividends; hold elected public officials to account; and be a tool for checks and balances, for effective democratic accountability in the East African country.

Chambers Umezulike is a Senior Programme Manager at Connected Development and a Development Governance Expert. He spends most of his time writing and choreographing researches on good and economic governance. He tweets via @Prof_Umezulike

Corruption is more predominant in Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly because, weak institutions cannot implement the required checks and balances required for effective democratic and accountable governance. Connected Development [CODE] through its initiative, Follow The Money (FTM), since 2012, has been at the frontline of initiatives that seek to address these aforementioned open government challenges in Nigeria through the civil society perspective of a grassroot movement. This, the organization is now extending to the New Gambia.

CODE Chief Executive, Hamzat Lawal, during an opening remarks at the NACEET

Follow The Money Gambia is a project under a Gambian non-profit, Gambia Participates, led by the young activist and youth leader Marr Nyang. The project aims to leverage on Gambia’s current political climate to entrench functioning democratic governance, effective public oversight, open government and improve the lives of communities in the country. Having mobilized young volunteers across the country, committed to following the money in their various communities, FTM Gambia flagged off the National Anti-Corruption, Citizen Education and Engagement Training (NACEET) Series 1.0. The training which took place on 17 January 2018, was to build the capacity of these volunteers on the FTM processes which they will step down in their communities, while they start running a campaign.

While facilitating a session in the training

As part of this, we were in the Gambia for a week, 16 – 20 January  2018, over a set of activities, all geared toward creating a favourable environment for citizenry driven accountability work and building the capacity of FTM Gambia. The team, which I was part of, facilitated sessions on the NACEET where participants were taken through the Follow The Money process.

The team with the Executive Director of National Youth Council, the Gambia

Furthermore, there was a press release about our visit, the NACEET and FTM Gambia operations. This was followed by radio and tv programme. Through these, we further sensitized the Gambian citizens on their rights, roles in the society and the essence of fulfilling their society-demanding responsibility of holding the government to account. Furthermore, these media activities were geared toward calling on the Gambian government to implement an FOI law in the country, so that citizens’ will have the right to request public financial information. Recognizing this to be an obstacle in the accountability work, fiscal transparency and the ambition of FTM Gambia, we paid a courtesy on the Lamin Darboe, Executive Director of the Gambia National Youth Council for a collaboration toward having such a law implemented. Such visit was also paid to the Director of International Republican Institute country office in the Gambia.

The team getting ferried across the Atlantic to access Touba Angellah Community

Obviously, we would not have gone to The Gambia without a visiting a rural community. As such, the team was at Touba Angellah in Nuimi, North Bank Region of the country, 45 kilometers away from Banjul. For a community engagement programme. The dilapidated health and educational facilities in the community were assessed for coherent advocacy for them to be fixed. This also afforded us the opportunity of conducting citizen education at the community with a focus on anti-corruption, budget tracking, active citizenry and social accountability.

The trip was a beautiful one, regardless strengthening the capacity of FTM Gambia in running campaigns, including having a well structured internal system and processes for improvement in performance of its activities for phenomenal outcomes and results, it was a great opportunity to meet our colleagues there. Also, we enjoyed good Gambian meals, met several friends and enjoyed the beautiful coastal scenery of the country. In addition, the NACEET afforded me the opportunity to meet vibrant and passionate Gambians who were ready to make sure their country works through being active citizens.

By the end of the year, FTM Gambia would have carried campaigns in 20 constituencies of the country, while being at the frontline of strategic and multi-dimensional advocacy for the enactment of a Freedom of Information Bill in the New Gambia.

Kufana Primary School, one of the PS’ to be rehabilitated with NGN 38 m by Kad SUBEB

In 2015, the UNESCO estimated that over 65 million Nigerians were illiterates, with adult literacy rate at 57.9% (National Bureau of Statistics, 2010). One of the major factors responsible for this has remained the continual rise in the number of out-of-schoolchildren in the country. Since many adults could not access basic education at childhood, the possibility of acquiring such while grown is exceedingly contracted. In the light of this, the UNICEF’s 2014 estimate of Nigeria having 10.5 million of the cumulative global 20 million out-of-school children, should be of great concern to the country, requiring a high-level sense of national urgency.

As part of the strategies to rollback the rising number of out-of-schoolchildren in Nigeria, in 2004, the Universal Basic Education Act was signed into law establishing the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC). The Commission’s mandate is to improve the enrollment of school children and reduce the current dropout rates. As a step-down measure, states created their own Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEB). In furtherance, the Commission provides basic education funding to SUBEB, mainly through annual interventions. Despite this, many of the basic education challenges in the country have not been addressed. In the midst of these difficulties has been contracted open government in the management of UBEC funds by SUBEBs, which has occasioned an enabling environment for corruption to thrive. Such corruption has jeopardized a conducive learning atmosphere for Nigerian children.

Following the foregoing, and as a countermeasure toward the open government deficit, with support from MacArthur Foundation, Connected Development [CODE] kicked-off a project in Kaduna State (as a pilot in the country) to mobilize the public for effective oversight on the implementation of UBEC funds in the state through enhanced citizen’s participation. Starting with four focal LGAs in the state, the project aims to strengthen the capacity of School Monitoring Teams (SMTs) which comprises of Community Based Associations/Organizations (CBA/O), Parents Teachers Associations (PTA) and the School Based Monitoring Committees (SBMC) to conduct high quality tracking of the UBEC spending in 70 schools within a span of 3 years. The project was launched on 14 September 2017 in Kaduna through a stakeholders meeting with over 80 participants in attendance.

A group photo after the stakeholders meeting

Furthermore, from 3 – 5 October 2017, Follow The Money team was in Kaduna over the next activity of the project, which were trainings for the SMTs on tracking UBEC spending strategies (for two days), and Kaduna SUBEB (Kad-SUBEB) on data collection and analysis (for one day). With all the participants wholly in attendance, the SMTs’ training went on smoothly and was hands-on following our level of preparedness which manifested through critical documents we made available to the participants. They included report templates to provide feedback after visiting project sites; list of projects, amounts and contractors to monitor; bills of quantities (BoQs) etc. It was the first time the SMTs saw such documents.

Group photo at the end of SMTs training

In a similar manner, first, during the Focused Group Discussion with the SMTs, it was clear that they have not been carried along on needs assessment across schools to feed the UBE action plan of the state, that is sent to UBEC annually, for intervention access. Secondly, the SMTs have not been useful in project monitoring across schools because they lack key project and financial data. While we noted these issues, the SMTs were taken through the set of projects they would track. The training for Kad-SUBEB officials took place on the last day, featuring knowledge transfer on data collection tools and methods, routine monitoring data and data process management, using MS. Excel for data analysis etc.

Lessons learnt from the trainings encompass, first, the SUBEB training should have been for two days. This will be corrected in the second round of training in the second year of the project. Secondly, the session which featured a group work for SMTs to examine the BoQs should have been facilitated by an engineer that understands the technical terms used on the documents. This was partly addressed by the re-iteration that the tracking should be a collaborative effort. So while SMTs are stepping down the training in their communities, trips to project sites for monitoring should include a community-based engineer for effective tracking using the BoQs.

Thanks to Kaduna SUBEB for all the data earlier provided to us which lubricated the project and most especially the SMTs training. The data encompass the list of successful bidders for the state’s 2014 UBE action plan which is currently being implemented, as well as the BoQs of selected projects. Tune In for other approaching activities of the project, which include town hall meetings across the selected LGAs on the school projects’ implementation. By the end of this month, Follow The Money radio will be live in Kaduna, detailing the progress of the project and enhancing citizen engagement in UBEC spending implementation.. Ultimately, join us here, https://ifollowthemoney.mn.co for conversations and development on the progress of the project.

Chambers Umezulike is a Senior Programme Manager at Connected Development and a Development Governance Expert. He spends most of his time writing and choreographing researches on good and economic governance. He tweets via @Prof_Umezulike.

After extensive parish-pump, pedestrian and partisan theatrics on the 2017 Appropriation Bill passage and minimal cause célèbre regarding its presidential assent, the 2017 Appropriation Act was finally signed into law on the 12th of June 2017 by the Acting President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo. Consequently, on 19 June 2017, as a convention, the Ministry of Budget and National Planning (MBNP) organized a public presentation of the Act. In attendance were numerous relevant governmental/non-governmental stakeholders. While I was partly impressed by Sen Udo Udoma’s (Minister of Budget and National Planning) presentation, in which he elementrified several components of the budget, let me start by registering few concerns and remarks:

First, the Budget Process – It is quite despondent that there was no sense of urgency on the part of the National Assembly to expedite the Appropriation Bill’s passage. The theatrics of the delay in the passage was driven my personal and partisan interests with utmost disregard over consequent budget implementation retardation denouement and the concerns of Nigerians. This was exactly an echolalia of what happened with the 2016 budget which affected its implementation. Nothing was learnt from the 2016 retardation. Note that, a financial year starts from 1 January of every year and ends on December 31. However, this budget cycle crisis has persisted over time and will affect the 2017 budget implementation, as well as the economic growth rate assumption of 2.2% by the government as discernible in its Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (EGRP).

Secondly, Nigeria is really a poor country – While Nigerians dance around the epileptic euphoria of being an oil-rich country, it’s imperative to note that the international energy dynamics have changed with oil losing its worth on a daily basis. While the country’s 2017 budget is at NGN7.44t ($25b), the highest ever, for a country of over 180 million population, this shows Nigeria is poor. The budget per capita is NGN40,000, roughly $100. That is what the government intends to spend on each Nigerian in the year. This is with the endemic poverty, low illiteracy and life expectancy rates, gross infrastructural deficit and low manufacturing capacity. Comparatively, Indonesia’s 2017 budget is at $158b for a population of 257 million putting the budget per capita at $614. Notably, as one of Nigeria’s former economic comparators, it has outperformed Nigeria on an avalanche of macro-economic metrics with far better infrastructure. Furthermore, the budget of the State of California in the United State alone for 2017 is at $179b.

The shocking part is that Nigeria’s $25b budget has a deficit of NGN2.35t (est. of $8b). This really means Nigeria is poor, for her not to be able to fund such nanoscopic deficit. In the 2016 fiscal year, Apple Inc. made revenue of $215b. Nigeria’s expected revenues from oil this year is roughly at $8b. This shows innovation and technology are the future of today’s world. But Nigeria cannot be considered ready for this, as she also appropriated a petty NGN41.7b for capital expenditure in Science and Technology in the budget.

Thirdly, Capital Expenditure – While the government prides itself for raising capital expenditure from 15% in 2015 (which is quite unbelievable) to 31% in 2017 [which is commendable], the country has to do more in this regard. The government cannot basically be using the budget for recurrent costs.

Major MDA Capital Allocations – Source, Budget Office of the Federation

Going back to the Minister’s presentation and further contents of the budget, he commented, “The budget was designed to expand partnership between public and private sectors, including development capital to leverage and springboard resources for growth and restore the economy, all in line with the ERGP’  In sum, the budget intends to focus on:

1.      Infrastructural expansion – NGN553.7b for Works, Power and Housing and NGN241.7b for Transport. This is to spur growth, improve ease of doing business, facilitate diversification efforts, fund agricultural value chain and provide an enabling environment for businesses.
2.      NGN 46b for the establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in each of the geo-political zones to drive manufacturing and exports – While this is welcoming. It seems it’s at this time Nigeria is really thinking of development. It can also be said that low oil prices is forcing the country to manufacture ideas. Its run-of-the-mill economic sense that if you cannot provide sufficient infrastructure and environment for businesses that you establish SEZs for such to attract foreign and domestic investors. East Asian countries such as Singapore, Indonesia and China all established such zones in the 70s and 80s. Nigeria is late to this party.
3.      Encouraging the growth of small and medium industries through the recapitalization of the Banks of Industry and Agriculture with NGN15b to increase access to financing.
4.      And providing a social safety net for poor Nigerians.

Key Assumptions and Macro-Framework of 2017 Budget – Source, Budget Office of the Federation

In furtherance, the NGN7.44t budget has key assumptions such as: oil production at 2.2mbpd, benchmark oil price at US$44.5/b, the exchange rate at N305/US$ and the aforementioned economic growth rate of 2.2%. The budget also envisages total revenue of NGN5.08t, exceeding that of 2016 by 30.2%, with capital expenditure at NGN2.36t.

Moving forward, first, the problem has always been implementation crisis as well as the lack of transparency, accountability and citizen engagement in governmental spending. There is a great need for increased transparency and accountability in the budget’s implementation with updates on capital releases for effective public oversight. This is following the Minister of Finance comment at the event that the government already has the first tranche capital release of NGN350b. Secondly, while there are already promises in this respect, both from the Executive and Legislature, something should be done quickly about the budget cycle crisis. Topical commitments to see that the 2018 budget is passed by December this year should be followed with sufficient political will and commitment to have that realized. Ultimately is swift implementation of the budget considering we are already at the half of the year.

I wish the government goodluck with the budget implementation.

Chambers Umezulike is a Senior Programme Manager at Connected Development and a Development Expert. He spends most of his time writing and choreographing researches on good and economic governance. He tweets via @Prof_Umezulike.

Photo Credit: Water Aid

Water is life and sufficient water supply is central to life and civilization. Water is part of the five basic human needs and plays a key role in the other four. Nigeria is abundantly blessed with water resources. However, as at 2015, only 69% of Nigerians have access to improved water supply with 57% of them being of rural population. During the oil boom days of the 1970s and early 1980s, the country invested hugely in water resources development, primarily in the construction of multipurpose dams which were meant to control flood, provision of water for domestic and industrial uses, the environment, hydro-power generation, control of riparian rights releases and for fishing, inland waterways, livestock and irrigated agriculture amongst others.

The responsibility of water supply in Nigeria is shared between three tiers of government – federal, state and local. While the federal government is in charge of water resources management and state governments have the primary responsibility for urban water supply through state water agencies; local governments together with communities are responsible for rural water supply. To improve manpower supply for the water resources sector, the National Water Resources Institute, Kaduna was established in 1979, running certificate, remedial and National Diploma and Higher National Diploma and professional post graduate courses in water resources. Preceding this was the establishment of the Federal Ministry of Water Resources (FMoWR) in 1976 with the mandate of developing and implementing programs, policies and projects that will lubricate sustainable access to safe and adequate water to meet the cultural, economic development, environmental and social needs of all Nigerians. The FMoWR has 12 River Basin Development Authorities under the Ministry, responsible for developing and planning irrigation work, water resources, and the collection of hydrological, hydro-geological data.

The National Water Supply and Sanitation Policy was approved in 2000, encouraging private-sector participation and provides for institutional and policy reforms at the state level. However, little has happened in both respects. As at 2007, only four of the 36 states and the FCT (Cross River, Kaduna, Lagos and Ogun States) have introduced public-private partnerships in the form of service contracts. While the federal government has a decentralization policy in this regard, little decentralization has happened. In addition, the policy also lays emphasis on rural water and sanitation through community participation. It targeted to increase water coverage from 43% to 80% by 2010 and 100% by 2015. This was not met. In addition, the capacity of local governments to plan and carry out investments, or to operate and maintain systems with respect to rural water management has remained low despite efforts at capacity development. As a result, the FMoWR and the river basin development authorities have been directly carrying off water facilities provision such as boreholes in rural communities.

In 2003, a Presidential Water Initiative: Water for People, Water for Life, was launched by then President Olusegun Obasanjo. The initiative had ambitious targets to increase water access (including a 100 percent target in state capitals), 75% access in other urban areas, and 66% access in rural areas. However, little has been done to implement the initiative and targets have not been met. The National Water and Sanitation Policy was also launched in 2004 with emphasis on water management and conservation. Nigeria was also not able to reach the Millennium Development Goal for water and sanitation. In June 2016, President Muhammadu Buhari approved a Water Resources Roadmap (2016 – 2030) with the goal of reaching 100% water supply to Nigerian citizens by 2030. The roadmap encompasses several priorities including: the establishment of a policy and regulatory framework for the sector; development and implementation of a National Water Supply and Sanitation Programme to attain the Sustainable Development Goals 6; identifying alternative sources for funding the delivery of water supply and sanitation through improved collaboration with development partners, states and local government authorities, communities and the private sector [Partnership for Expanded Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (PEWASH)] etc. It’s hoped that this does not go down history as one of the country’s numerous policies in the sector that was not thoroughly implemented.

There have been enormous contributions of several external partners with respect to water supply in Nigeria, rural water provision especially, and the Nigerian government welcomes such contributions. These partners include the African Development Bank (ADB), the EU, JICA, UNICEF, USAID, WaterAid, Action Against Hunger and the World Bank. The ADB and the World Bank provide loans to the federal government; the EU, JICA and USAID provide grants to the government; the UNICEF and WaterAid receive donations from the public and grants from governments to implement their projects in cooperation with, but not through the government. Even many domestic NGOs all have programs on the provision of rural water supply to counter the water crisis in many of such communities.This is through direct project implementation and advocacy. This is where Connected Development comes in, using its Follow The Money program to track governmental expenditure on rural water provision in rural communities to facilitate service delivery and provision of clean water. The program also advocates for governmental intervention to address the aquatic needs of most of these communities.

At this time, what is key is the provision of financial resources from all concerned parties to finance the Water Supply Section of the PEWASH Phase I (2016 – 2020) of the FMoWR’s which is at the estimate of NGN 108 billion. There are also key challenges with respect to the management of water facilities around the country. In many rural communities, water boreholes are abandoned and cannot be maintained over the lack of a preceding regime for the funding and maintenance of such water facilities. This has continued for sometime and has to be checked. Thus, it is imperative that the government encourages user participation in the management of water facilities especially at the rural level with realistic water tariff structures. In addition, there is a need for proper coordination between the different levels of government and the public. Ultimately, a recurring challenge is the unavailability of adequate and reliable data upon which planning, analysis, and water management can be based. Data on characteristic patterns in hydrological and meteorological changes over time need to be monitored with utmost sense of duty. This is exceedingly important for efficient planning and service delivery.  

Chambers Umezulike is a Programme Manager at Connected Development and a Development Expert. He spends most of his time writing and choreographing researches on good and economic governance. He tweets via @Prof_Umezulike.

[The DG of Budget Office, Ben Akabueze making a  presentation during the Budget Transparency and Accountability Workshop]

It is widely accepted that transparency in government leads to the generation of government accountability since it allows citizens of a democracy to reduce government corruption, bribery and other malfeasance, and control their government. It is also widely accepted that an open, transparent government allows for the dissemination of information and proceedings of government, which in turn forces government to be accountable, helps to guarantee societal progress and effective public oversight, while ensuring participation.

There have been several transparency, accountability and participation movements all over the world. Such movements in developing countries have more justifications for clamouring for such as a result of poor governance, systemic wrecking of public funds, public records inaccessibility and impecunious citizen participation in governance. As a result, citizens of such countries have found it increasingly difficult to hold their governments to account.

This is the case of Nigeria, where several non-profits and movements have been pushing for greater governmental accountability and transparency. And for the first time since the history of the country, the present administration made a striking commitment by signing unto the Open Government Partnership (OGP). The OGP is a multilateral and multi-stakeholder initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from national governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, harness new technologies to strengthen governance and fight corruption. Nigeria getting on-board the partnership through President Buhari’s commitment to such resulted in a synthesis of government and civil society efforts to realize open government in the country.

Currently, Nigeria just started implementing the National Action Plan (NAP), a key process of the OGP. The plan has 4 commitments that both the government and civil society have made and are implementing across ensuring fiscal transparency, fighting corruption, improving citizenry access to information and citizen engagement.

In line with these developments, the Budget Office of the Federation (BoF) and the Collaborative Africa Budget Reform Initiative organized a workshop on budget transparency and accountability on 9 May 2017 at Transcorp Hilton Hotels, Abuja. In attendance were several international and domestic stakeholders from the government, civil society and private sector. The workshop was organized to allow the Nigerian government examine how it can bolster transparency and participation outcomes in the country with focus on budget transparency – how budget information can be made more accessible, how to move forward in implementing reforms that improves Nigeria’s Open Budget Index Score (OBIS).

The workshop majorly kicked off through a presentation by the Director-General of BoF on Transparency, Accountability and Participation: Reforms and Why It Matters. He used his presentation to highlight progresses made on open government in the country, detailing the OGP and its NAP Commitments. He also mentioned that an area that requires commitments and attention of all relevant stakeholders is Nigeria’s OBIS which as at 2015 was at number 24 on the ranking under insufficient. He also mentioned that in a bid to counter such embarrassing trend, the BoF is on the verge of commissioning the Citizen’s Budget Portal where citizens would have timely information of budget processes including contracting and implementation. In addition, the portal will have further contents such as the BoF Help Desk and Hot Lines to take questions from the general public on budget issues and implementation.

This was followed by a presentation by Atiku Samuel of BudgIT on the Status of Budget Transparency in Nigeria. He took his time to explain the international standards of budget transparency and how the OBIS is measured. After this was a session on How to Make Budget Data More Accessible by Atzimba Baltazar of COMETA. She emphasised the need for a Citizen’s budget which should be a few paged document on governmental revenues, debts and expenditure in a fiscal year using infographics and cartoons to simplify understanding for the citizenry. She lifted lessons Nigeria could learn from countries such as Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa where citizen’s budgets are already been issued out.

The last session was a group discussion on 3 key questions: 1). Do you have enough information on the budget? 2). Who do you go to access the information and 3). How do you prefer to access this information? The resolutions after the group discussions on the questions, respectively, are:

1). Yes, while we have information on the budget including the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, Budget Proposal, Appropriation Act, Budget Implementation Reports etc. the problem is that accessibility to these documents atimes are not timely. Most of them are not in open source formats. Most of the budget line items are not detailed enough, and ultimately, a lay man would not be able to understand the technicalities on most of these documents. 2). It was generally agreed that this should be from the Budget Office, Ministry of Finance and few other primarily concerned MDAs. 3). In open source format – the citizen’s budget and the citizen’s budget portal will go a long way in assisting in this regard.

While one must applaud the BoF and the present administration on efforts to use open government as a tool in fighting corruption, increasing participation and ensuring effective public oversight, there should be sufficient governmental political will in implementing the NAP, other consequent commitments and responding to Freedom of Information (FOI) Requests. For CODE (Follow The Money), the citizen’s budget portal will be largely utilitarian in accessing key budget information for rural communities which we fail to access on time even through piles of FOI requests. Such will enable us take such details down to rural communities and in building their capacity for effective public oversight, ensuring service delivery and in holding their governments accountable.

Chambers Umezulike is a Programme Manager at Connected Development and a Development Expert. He spends most of his time writing and choreographing researches on good and economic governance. He tweets via @Prof_Umezulike.

[During one of our townhall meetings at Uratta Umuoha Community, Abia State – a key social accountability strategy through which we have enabled communities organize stakeholder engagements to facilitate the implementation of projects intended for them]

On the 11^th of April 2017, the boardroom of MacArthur Foundation Nigeria was filled with several civil society actors on accountability, transparency and civic engagement. In attendance were over 30 representatives from domestic non-profits who are MacArthur grantees. They were there for a conversation with two accountability scholars, John Gaventa, and Walter Flores. An event in which staffers of MacArthur Foundation Headquarters joined virtually from the United States, the aim was to share ideas and have grantees move from tactical accountability approaches to more strategic approaches. As one of the representatives of Connected Development [CODE], I went in with several expectations which were met.

The conversation started with a presentation, Dancing the TAP Dance: Linking Transparency, Accountability and Participation, by Prof John Ganveta who teaches at the Institute of Development Studies, United Kingdom. He started with sharing key governance issues that led to the rise of accountability and transparency movement globally. Most of them encompass accountability deficit, democratic deficit and impecunious active citizen participation in governance. He then went on explaining how several tools such as ensuring service delivery, improving budgetary processes, ensuring open government, aid transparency and NGO accountability can be utilitarian in addressing these challenges. Addressing these challenges would consequently lead to better services through monitoring, improved democracy, reduced public service corruption, empowerment, human rights, greater access to information and challenging inequality.

Another presentation, Citizen-led Accountability: Power, Politics and Strategies, was by Dr Walter Flores of Center for the Study of Equity and Governance in Health Systems (CEGSS) who took time to share his organization’s works on accountability and challenging inequalities in Guatemala. He emphasised that the roles of transparency and accountability in curbing inequalities include turning citizens from passive to active users of services who can demand accountability from the government. According to him, when they started, they first of all started collecting data on how a particular faction of the society was being marginalized in getting services in drug stores and hospitals. The data was collected through sms, audio/visual evidence and they embarked on advocacy and engaged the government with such evidence for appropriate response. They also created channels of engagement for such citizens to discuss problems and implement solutions.

At a time, politics came into play and they were challenged by governmental authorities for not having the legitimacy to advocate for the communities. They then were forced to decentralize their operations to let citizens and communities lead it through their building capacities. Communities were then organized for monitoring. In a presentation in which he shared most of their successes, he finalized by stating that social accountability is crucial for accountability to work. And that in such work, it’s better to start with community organizing and rights literacy, while collective and participatory interventions, strategies and results are imperative.

After the phenomenal presentations were questions, comments and commitments from organizations present. In line with Dr Flores presentation, I made a remark on the effectiveness of his social accountability strategy which we use at CODE. At CODE, in tracking governmental expenditure in rural communities for service delivery, we start with rights literacy in the concerned communities and co-organize town hall meetings with their community leaders for conversation around the particular projects with implementing governmental agencies and contractors. The town hall meetings have helped to embed community ownership in our works and within the chain of our participatory strategies, communities are empowered to ensure these projects are implemented long after we have pulled out. Also in the same line, for sustainability, decentralization of our strategies and community ownership, we activated ifollowthemoney.org to mobilize young people in these communities to ensure governmental accountability themselves.

The conversation was quintessential and more of it are crucial with respect to capacity building of the civil society and sharing of ideas.

Chambers Umezulike is a Programme Manager at Connected Development and a Development Expert. He spends most of his time writing and choreographing researches on good and economic governance. He tweets via @Prof_Umezulike.

On 29 and 30 March 2017, the Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice through its Civil Society Advocacy to Support Anti-Corruption in Nigeria organised a 2-day workshop to build the capacity of selected CSOs and journalists on the concept of Open Government Partnership (OGP) and the implementation United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) in Nigeria including the second UNCAC review process. The workshop was also for enhancing the capacity of the invited organizations in their policy advocacy and engagement with relevant agencies of government around the issues.

In attendance were around 30 persons from mainly civil society organisations, including focal persons for the UNCAC review and OGP from EFCC, TUGAR and Ministry of Justice who were invited to the opening ceremony.

Highlights of the workshop include, first, the identification and use of red flags to monitor procurement processes session led by the personnel of Bureau of Public Procurement. He used the session to bring to the fore, key processes of procurement from the planning stage to evaluation, explaining how contracts are awarded, how contractors bid and how one can file a petition if not comfy with the bidding outcome. He also displayed to the participants, key pages of the open contracting website portal (being developed) through which all information on procurement and contracting from all federal agencies will be accessed online.

Secondly, there was a session on UNCAC Review Process and Mechanism with focus on chapters 2 and 5 of the convention. Chapter 2 was on Preventable Measures on Corruption while 5 was on Assets Recovery. The role of CSOs in the review process was also highlighted and discussed.

Thirdly and ultimately was a session on the OGP, led by Mr Stanley Acholonu of BudgIT. He used the session to highlight the 4 themes on Nigeria’s National Action Plan (NAP), a plan to be implemented in 2 years. The themes are Fiscal Transparency, Anti-Corruption, Citizen Engagement and Access to Information. There are 14 commitments under these themes with outcomes, indicators, activities, timeline, responsible institutions etc. He also mentioned of the review regime of the NAP and the importance of CSOs to be in either of the working groups. The latter are 7, namely, Fiscal Transparency, Anti-Corruption, Citizen Engagement and Access to Information, Innovation and Technology, Communications and Monitoring and Evaluation. These working groups are made up of governmental personnel and CSOs that meet regularly to access implementation. The roles of CSOs in the implementation include putting pressure and reminding the government of the commitments, carrying off independent review process and providing assistance to the government in the implementation of the NAP.

The workshop was a phenomenal one. I also met interesting participants and elemental stakeholders from several organizations whose group contributions were so helpful, and offside discussions during tea and lunch breaks, I learnt so much from. The OGP process most especially is the hope of Nigeria to get governance right. I hope we realize most of the commitments within the 2 year window.

Chambers Umezulike is a Programme Manager at Connected Development and a Development Expert. He spends most of his time writing and choreographing researches on good and economic governance. He tweets via @Prof_Umezulike.

Last week was one of my best and a good one for democracy as I had the opportunity of participating in a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) training organized by Cloneshouse Nigeria. Pre this training, I had a contracted knowledge of the M&E process (also referred in this piece as The Process) albeit I was quite aware that its skills are amongst the most requested of, in the non-profit development space. The only thing I could remember on M&E was one of my International Economics professor’s comments that inadequate M&E frameworks are one of the problems facing governance in Africa. As someone passionate about knowledge, outstandingly so when it concerns development, my interest and expectations from the training were hyper-raised.

What I did immediately was to seek permission from my boss to attend the training and scan through most of my Masters’ education briefs in International Economic Policy Analysis to probably get a deeper insight into what The Process was all about. I also went online, trying to have a briefing about the theme. Summary of what I picked was that The Process is a key component of policy processes and comes timely in improving and assessing performance of programs, projects, institutions and policies.

The first day of the 8-day training proved to me that I was in the right place. It was held at the Boardroom, on Ganges Street, Maitama, Abuja, and in participation were 9 colleagues in the development space from the British Council’s Nigeria Stability and Reconciliation Programme and PACT Nigeria. The training started by introducing The Process and accentuating its very importance in the implementation of projects. ‘The essence of M&E is to achieve results in programs implementation and for measuring the extent and impacts of  open government, open governance etc. in project implementation,’ said Oludotun Babayemi, one of the facilitators. So, The Process is for enhancing topical and future management of outputs, outcomes and impact of a program. The monitoring component of The Process helps in tracking the program activities so as to adjust deficiencies, while the evaluation component helps to assess the program’s performance after 2 – 5 years of its implementation.

From these were further lectures on the 12 components of an M&E system. According to Oludotun, ‘this is the engine of The process.’ The components encompasses organizational structure for M&E system, human capacity building of M&E staffers, carrying all relevant stakeholder partnerships necessary, communicating processes and performance of the program to relevant stakeholders, M&E plan, costed work plan, routine monitoring to improve performance, periodic surveys, data auditing, database system, evaluation and research, and using information to improve results.

What caught my attention was the configuration of an M&E plan which has the logical framework, data source matrix, budget, information product matrix, information dissemination matrix, managing partnerships between stakeholders and when the M&E system and plan will be reviewed. The logical framework, which remains one of the most important component of the M&E plan and process interested me the most, as it contains the result chain [inputs, activities, outputs (routine monitoring), outcomes and impact (evaluation)]. All of the result chain elements have indicators for measuring them. These indicators have baseline (situation before program implementation accessed during baseline assessment) and targets (quantifiable goals of the different components of the result chain – what the program intends to achieve at each stage).

The evaluation component of The Process was unpacked highlighting the core focus of such, such as efficiency, effectiveness, relevance, sustainability and impact. The evaluation report is prepared through the segmentation and population of the themes and so wise the preparation of data collection tools. According to one of the facilitators, ‘Before you design an evaluation plan, you must study the program framework very intensively to understand roles and partnerships. In addition, collecting data for evaluation report should be from the implementing agency and beneficiaries, and within the themes of Evaluation.’

Data collection for periodic monitoring, surveys and evaluation are exceedingly vital in The Process as it presents the sources of data, publication dates, who does what, budget for the data collection or access and methodology of data collection etc. In addition were exposures to monitoring information system, logical framework, checklist for evaluation planning etc. From this were lectures on the data collection and analysis component of evaluation in M&E – how programs are evaluated. Google forms were used to simplify the preparation of data collection tools, electronic data collection, and it automatically gathers data and input in a database (Google Spreadsheet). The Spreadsheet was so handy for data analysis. We were also exposed to the Kobo tool box for mobile data collection. Microsoft Excel was also used for data analysis. Altogether, as someone that has been battling with using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences for elementary data analysis, the applications/software helped to demystify data analysis.

At the end of the training, I presented an M&E plan for a pseudo program. The plan was for an international nonprofit 2 year program which intends to improve literacy rate in a certain Shikira community from 25% in 2017 to 35% in 2019 through improving primary school enrollment in the community and improving teachers knowledge and teaching skills. The community, with a population of 1,000 with 60% being under 14 children has one of the poorest literacy rates in a State with poor primary school enrollment rate, inadequate number of classrooms and teaching equipment, and lack of skilled teachers. Please find the M&E plan/assignment here. The plan was supposed to make sure the results and objectives of the program were achieved.

This was a phenomenal training and wonderful exposure to M&E for me. Having stated that I started the training with no single knowledge of The Process, I am still surprised about how fast I learnt and how meaningful and interesting the training was. Perhaps, the expansive knowledge of the facilitators, their quality teaching skills and the various M&E System templates used and shared guaranteed this. This was so beautiful to me and I look forward to having the knowledge gained become relevant as I move forward career wise and academically. As someone passionate about economic development and interested in the development sector, I was really impressed. This was beautiful. This was SUPER. M&E really interests me and remains one of the best initiatives or processes in the development sector.

I think M&E training is necessary for everyone in the development space, both in public and nonprofit organizations. Organizations also have to send their staffers for such training. The dynamics of the training are expansive and cuts across the normative operations of organizations. For human capacity building, monitoring and evaluating performance and achieving results in programs and projects, as well as for enhanced organizational productivity, such training is exceedingly important.
Chambers Umezulike is a Programme Manager at Connected Development and a Development Expert. He spends most of his time writing and choreographing researches on good and economic governance. He tweets via @Prof_Umezulike.

[Follow The Money Team, ONE Campaign Africa Country Director and The World Bank SOML PforR Departmental Personnel]

In 2012, the Nigerian Federal Government initiated the Saving One Million Lives Program For Results (SOML PforR). It was a program to rollback child and maternal mortality in the country and save an estimate of 900,000 women and children that die each year through preventable causes. The program was also intended to improve immunization and nutritional outcomes across the country and train birth attendants etc. Subsequently in 2015, the World Bank approved $500 million credit for the program. To ensure transparency and accountability in the fund’s implementation, on 2 February of the same year, the Bretton Woods institution invited Civil Society Organizations for a consultative meeting to get their feedback, suggestions and inputs on the program.

Between 2015 and 2016, there was no other such of civil society engagement by the World Bank on the credit, occasioning speculations about what could be happening to the fund. However, around September 2016, the World Bank provided $55.5 million as part of the credit to the Federal Ministry of Health who then gave $1.5 million to each of the 36 states and the FCT. At the receipt of this development, we started tracking the implementation of the one and half million dollars at Primary Healthcare Centres across rural communities in Akwa Ibom, Enugu, Kano, Kogi, Osun and Yobe States. But this been back-breaking following information crisis, confusion, secrecy and anomalous reporting on the fund. As at December 2016, many of the states were saying that they have not received the fund. In addition, it was only Yobe State that gave us their Work Plan for the fund, while other states did not even acknowledge our Freedom of Information (FOI) requests on that.

Several FOI requests to the Ministry of Health and its SOML PforR Department for details on states that have received the fund were never acknowledged. Consequently, on 8 December, 2016, we wrote the World Bank Country Office asking for audience to share our experience with respect to tracking the fund and getting several key details on the fund release dynamics from them. They did not acknowledge or reply our request too. In January 2017, we overheard President Buhari making a pronouncement that the $1.5 million has been released to all the states.

Following these developments, we wrote again to the World Bank on 27 February seeking an audience on the SOML PforR and we were invited for a meeting on 8 March, 2017. In the meeting with the institution’s SOML Program Lead, Dr Benjamim Loevinsohn was impressed that a CSO is genuinely interested in ensuring open government in the implementation of the fund. He briefed us of several developments around the $55.5 million and the SOML PforR itself. He promised collaborations and information sharing with Follow The Money Team to ensure the fund would be clinically implemented to save thousands of lives across the country.

He also used the occasion to comment on Nigeria’s immunization outcome, which was surprisingly lower than that of Afghanistan. The latter has been into political instability for more than a decade. Similarly, Cameroon and Ghana all have better immunization outcome than Nigeria. “The problem in Nigeria has been vaccines supply issue,” said Dr Benjamin. On the $1.5 million, he also stated, “the fund has been released to each of the states and the FCT. I am certain that as at last 3 weeks, about 30 states have gotten access to the fund. The remaining few states have not accessed the fund because they have not met up with some of the fund access regime elements.”

Dr Benjamin promised to discuss with the Ministry of Health over quarterly engagements with the civil society and the media on the SOML PforR implementation.