It’s no longer breaking news that over ten years ago, two young Nigerians started a social movement to empower citizens with information to hold government accountable. Most recently, this movement has become very laudable with massive growth and scalability across other African countries.

A deep dive into the growth cycle of this brand, presents the enormous opportunity embedded in this social product. Follow the Money is a moving machine with the capacity to provide value for as much as 100,000 million USD and above. Every social investor should plunge in their resources into this initiative, because of its proven capacity to deliver grassroot driven social impact.

Literally, young people have adopted this model and independently are taking actions in their communities to demand and ensure that public funds work for the good of all. At the coordinating center of Follow the money in Abuja, we are currently at the stage of massive fundraising strategies to attract sustainable, flexible and unrestricted fundings to support more young activists and campaigners to initiate and activate campaigns at all levels of governance with more emphasis on deprived communities.

As we anticipate and build strategies for sustainable funding for Follow The Money, my design team at the Connected Development have innovatively married in some components of our donor funded projects to accommodate the usability and expansion of the Follow The Money model in driving social accountability and expanding the FTM movements.

A list of some project designs that incorporated the FTM Model are highlighted below:

On the Power of Voices Project funded by OXFAM Novib, our state chapter teams leveraged on the wide-spread reach of National Orientation Agency (NOA), Independent Corrupt Practices and other offenses Commission (ICPC) and Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) across National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) camps in Akwa Ibom, Imo, Cross River, Rivers, Delta and FCT to engage youths on the power they possess in demanding transparency and accountability from elected officials for resources allocated to their communities using FollowTheMoney Model. Cumulatively, over 10,000 corps members were sensitized. Also, Akwa Ibom, Imo, Cross River, Rivers, Delta and FCT our state chapter teams embarked on setting up integrity clubs in five (5) secondary schools per State, bringing it to a total number of 30 integrity clubs. These clubs are strategically designed to train students to be champions of civic engagement and learn early in their lives, the power of their voices at the sub-national and national levels as well as stir their interest in governance in building a sustainable ideology.

On the Deepen Citizens’ Interest in Government Spending and Address Accompanying Corrupt Practices (DeSPAAC) project funded by the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation. We partnered with Community Life Project (CLP) and hosted a Campus Tour in the Federal University, Oye, Ekiti state (FUOYE) on the 18th of November, 2021, to promote citizen participation in governance and empower students in demanding for accountability and transparency from their immediate environment and government at all levels hence curbing the menace of corruption in our society. The key objectives of the Campus Tour was to engage millennials in tertiary institutions in Ekiti state on social accountability, governance, transparency, and accountability like the OGP and tools to track project implementation like the TETFund, to get them to take action in collaboration with CLP in tracking constituency projects and to get students to sign up on www.#followthemoney.org. The campus tour had in attendance the Vice Chancellor of Federal University Oye-Ekiti who was the chief host of the event and was ably represented by Mr. Onoga Vitalis representing the Dean of Student Affairs; Professor S.O Abifarin Dean of Faculty of Law; the State Director of National Orientation Agency (NOA) represented by Ilori Olayinka; Student leaders of Faculties and departments; the Student Union Government; CODE and CLP teams. There were 490 students physically in attendance with 57 participants joining via facebook live streaming.

We are very intentional in promoting the FTM Model, using this behavioural change strategy. Hosting a series of sensitization on the role of young people in ensuring the implementation of the open government partnership, transparency and accountability is very paramount in changing the narrative and uprooting the seed of corruption and its all side effects in nation building.

Our model is a proof that when citizens are informed and take ownership of the developmental of their communities then change is inevitable.

The COVID 19 Transparency and Accountability Project (CTAP) is built on strengthening and developing a strong learning community across the African continent thereby curating conversations and experiences on the issues of transparency and accountability across Africa through our global partners. 

CTAP partners increased collaboration and knowledge exchange among them moving from an initial state where their relations were mediated by CODE, BudgIT, and Global Integrity to one where it’s increased coordination and sharing directly among them (see graph below). 

Credit: Global Integrity

This has translated in collaboration for the production of multimedia content, to brainstorm solutions to challenges they are facing, and feature in each others’ events as a way to inspire partners in one country with the experiences and strategies used in other countries to demand transparency and accountability about COVID-19 response and recovery. 

In each country, CTAP partners were able to increase their networks, through events, use of social networks and direct contact with potential partners. Overall the CTAP network grew from an initial point of 93 organizations across the 7 countries to 206 organizations by the end of the first phase of the project. While most of this growth happened in Nigeria, thanks to the mobilization of existing Tracka and Follow the Money networks at the subnational level, all country partners increased their collaboration with national and subnational organizations in their contexts. 

It’s important to note that the way they approached reaching out to the local and community level varied with some countries opting to directly engage with local organizations and others building strong collaborations with national organizations that already had strong chapters across the subnational level. 

In terms of the type of stakeholders that are part of the network, civil society organizations (98), government agencies (45) and media (18) are the main ones. It’s important to note that the group with which CTAP members created more relationships was that of government agencies, in the baseline there were only 13 government agencies with which CTAP partners had relationships, it changed to 45 agencies at the end of phase 1.    

It’s also worthy of note that CTAP partners placed most of their efforts in strengthening their in-country coalitions; organizations working at the local and national level were increasingly brought into the network, 67 and 41 additional organizations respectively. Complementing this focus CTAP partners also increased their relationships with regional and global organizations working in their contexts, bringing in 9 additional organizations, which place them well to increase this type of collaboration into the second phase of CTAP.  Specifically:

In Nigeria,, we organized 2 coalition-building meetings leading to the convergence and creation of CTAP Nigeria Coalition with 42 Civil Society actors as members. They shared their experiences and learnings while engaging with the government on different aspects pertaining to accountability for funds expended.

In Cameroon, we also organized two coalition meetings, hosting about 14 organizations.  The first coalition meeting was held on April 23, 2021, in Yaoundé-Cameroon under the theme ‘’Enhancing COVID-19 Transparency and Accountability in Cameroon”. The second was held on 17^th November 2021 under the theme “ Gauging the Transparency of COVID-19 Incidence Management Response”. These coalition meetings took place at the Solomon Tandeng Muna Foundation, Cameroon. We gathered  Civil Society Organizations ( CSO),  political parties, members of the media, as well as technical partners.

In Kenya,  CTAP coalition-building brought together – CSOs leading to the development of a strategy paper that will serve as a roadmap to guide and consolidate collective advocacy efforts at the sub-national and the national level in regards to enhancing COVID 19 transparency and accountability in public budgeting and contracting processes 

In Malawi, the CTAP coalition-building of CSO led to the development of an action plan on tracking COVID 19 funds and collaboration with the Center For Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) for tracking activity in Salima district. During the first coalition-building workshop that we had in Blantyre, the capital city, we had a good number of organizations that are working on transparency and accountability projects.  From the action plans that were developed, participants pledged to collaborate on following how the government is spending funds.  From this activity, 

In Ghana, the CTAP coali tion meeting brought together national and sub-national CSOs representing diverse areas of advocacy under covid spendings such as women’s empowerment, food security, and public financial management under one umbrella to sharpen the call for an audited report on covid spending. 

In Sierra Leone, we held a CSO Coalition meeting with 40 CSOs in attendance, where they shared their experiences and lessons learned from engaging with the government to demand accountability and transparency for health spending during the COVID-19 outbreak,  which led to the formation of CSOs forum to develop action plans based on the findings in the launched country analysis reports.

In Liberia, coalition meeting in partnership with Follow The Money Liberia, Libpedia, YARD Liberia Inc, Volunteer Hub Liberia, and Care for Life launched the Covid-19 Transparency and Accountability Project (CTAP)’s Research Report and calls for Collaboration among CSOs, government, and the media to enhance transparency and accountability in covid-19 intervention funds in Liberia. 

Finally, it became clear in all countries that the main areas for future work and advocacy in relation to COVID-19 response and recovery are those of readiness and effectiveness of the health systems to deliver services and vaccines in an equitable way. This complemented with tracking additional country-specific programs and paired with budget and contract transparency is the best way to ensure that the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic can reach all citizens in an equitable way and thus contribute to development results that benefit all.  

In a bid to provide African citizens with access to evidence on COVID-19 resources, leading social accountability initiatives, Follow The Money and BudgIT, with learning partners Global Integrity, launched a comprehensive user-friendly COVID-19 Fund Africa website as part of the COVID-19 Transparency & Accountability Project (CTAP).

The COVID Africa Tracking website has flexible navigation and functionality that allows visitors to access all data on COVID in Africa, including intervention resources, funds allocations, palliative distributions, accurate number of cases, data on COVID funds, vaccine management and government’s responsiveness.

The COVID tracking site also featured COVID analysis and research resources for seven focus countries: Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cameroon and Nigeria. It highlights COVID status in these countries and also features knowledge centers on human angle stories curated from citizens across the countries. Built with a focus on user’s experience, the one-stop website (https://www.covidfund.africa/) has some of these attributes;

• Live Updates on COVID data on a daily basis from all over Africa: 
• Data Display to provide face-level information on the total number of COVID fund allocation to Africa and COVID cases.
• Resource Filters which allows citizens to easily narrow down to the country or specific resource portfolio by clicking the African country they would like data on.
• Research and Papers on COVID tracking and government’s responsiveness in Africa.
• Rapid Response Functionality allowing the site to be compatible with all browsers and mobile devices.

All of these have allowed us a window of opportunity to engage with governments from all our focus countries, as this gives us opportunity to make informed decisions and ask the right questions from the concerned government officials across board. We believe we have led the way, we expect more citizens to take action with the information they now have access to. 

Covidfund.africa harnesses all data gathered from our work across Africa. The process that went into this included all partners submitting relevant data sets from in country, most especially our focus country, this was because, we understood some of these donations will not be on the world wide web because they were private donations, for example, Nigeria was able to raise over N20bn from private individuals across the country when COVID-19 hit the country, it was important to capture data sets like this, as this allowed us to know the full story concerning both cash and material donations. CTAP project leads in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cameroon were able to provide data sets of private donors from the country. 

All the gathered data needs to tell stories that can be related to by individuals and stakeholders across Africa. We also wanted the policy makers and leaders across all our focus countries to understand that we are aware and we are mapping out and implementing informed strategies to aid the reduction of corruption in the system of administering the funds received by individual countries. 

The platform does not only tell stories of data gathered, it’s also a repository of knowledge gathered across our focus countries, this includes, the research documents, human angle stories across Africa, Infographics, efforts to track in real time COVID-19 cases across africa and also tell stories as to how our focus countries are mitigating the effects of the pandemic in their respective countries. The platform has also allowed people to tell their stories and share challenges which they ordinarily will be afraid of sharing due to the consequences that follow such actions. 

In the past year, the website has had over 5,000,000 unique visits across the globe, this indicates that we are doing something right and we have also got some feedback to help improve the platform to better serve the needs of Africans and provide the best accountability platform everyone can trust. Our hope is that this platform actually gives every African the opportunity to hold their leaders accountable and give the insight to ask the right questions that will spur actions. 

The CTAP project needed to not only speak about the funds and donations coming into all African countries, we also wanted a platform where everyone who wants information concerning these funds can log into and get information. The success recorded by CTAP in all our focus countries largely sits on the back of the data we were able to collect from all open source platforms available to us. Bilateral, multilateral and private donors were the largest contributors to these funds across all African countries, we made sure not to only put our focus on Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Kenya and Malawi, we also spread our lens across all African countries. We know combing the internet for information is quite a task, however, we seek to make that easy by putting all verified information into the platform we have developed.

The COVID-19 Transparency and Accountability Project (CTAP) is an innovation implemented by Connected Development, BudgIT and Global Integrity with support from the Skoll and Conrad Hilton Foundation with a commitment to track all resources from public sector, private, multilateral and bilateral donors committed to COVID-19 pandemic. 

Phase one of the first year was implemented in seven countries – Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Malawi, Cameroon & Kenya with massive results and impact. 

Amidst all the success stories recorded, The CTAP project across focal countries encountered diverse challenges ranging from restricted public gatherings due to the pandemic and the shrinking civic space with accompanying media clampdown; as seen with the ban of Twitter in Nigeria.

Access to information, low political will accompanied by insecurity and uprising posed a challenge for the campaign team in ensuring smooth data collection, verification and dissemination. Notwithstanding, our multidimensional and citizen-driven strategy was utilized in ensuring the achievement of the project goals. 

The robustness of evidence was hampered by difficulties in accessing government records, Incident Action plans, audit reports and performance reports, etc., relating to the disbursement of COVID-19 funds and management. The broad unwillingness of officials to speak on the fiscal responsibility of states was frustrating and inhibitory. 

Our “carrot” approach was initially incorporated to ensure effective dialogue with government agencies on our research and tracking findings but this did not yield expected results. To mitigate this, our research and findings were cross-promoted via online and offline platforms resulting in massive outcomes and adoption of our recommendation by concerned government institutions. 

We activated civil society interest recorded during the coalition meetings but encountered stalled momentum in activating the aggregated actions due to funding constraints. The language barrier and financial constraint in publishing campaign materials in local country dialects and audiotapes for persons with disabilities hampered the dissemination of findings to grassroots communities. 

This also had some challenges for our human angle stories. Survivors of COVID-19 were not very open to telling their stories due to the accompanying stigma. We needed this to intensify the fight against misinformation, disinformation and fake news to fight these stigmatization. 

Our plan to work with the coalition was also initially challenged in some of the countries due to inadequate capacity of local CSOs to track government activities. However, we took time to train some of these partners and supported their project implementation process. We have also seen the need to advocate for the FOI (Freedom of Information Act) in these countries to make it easier to access government information and to demand transparency and accountability Specifically in; 

KENYA

Language barrier during the dissemination of findings to grassroots communities was a roadblock. Transfer of functions of Government in Nairobi County to a new entity hampered access to information. Cessation of movement as a Government directive to control the spread of the pandemic restricted public gatherings hence affected FTM-Kenya meetings. Bureaucracy by Government officials hampered access to information. Finally, early campaigns and electioneering period led to limited civic engagement spaces which hampered transparency.

CAMEROON

Across the focal regions, the robustness of evidence was hampered by difficulties in accessing government records, Incident Action plans, audit reports and performance reports, etc., relating to the disbursement of COVID-19 funds and management. The broad unwillingness of officials to speak on the fiscal responsibility of states was frustrating and inhibitory. The efforts of the researchers to access key documents from relevant offices and senior officials in the regions were stunted by time constraints imposed by the study duration (period) and the unfavorable attitudes of officials.

Insecurity in Bamenda and Mora hampered the tracking of PHC in the region. The security of the team was of paramount importance and could not be jeopardized. Throughout the implementation of the project in the crisis zones, the CTAP team respected  ‘’ghost town’’, during “ghost town” our champions did not go on the field to collect data.

MALAWI

Malawi invited government officials and representatives to be part of the coalition but none of them came through.  In addition,  we had set up numerous meetings with government representatives to present our research findings and recommendations on how covid 19 funds should be handled (transparency and accountability) but to no avail.   Only when we published our research in the local media platforms and sent the research findings to our individual connections is when we yielded results and our recommendations got to the President.  

In addition,  after we held our two coalition-building workshops, we had a lot of interest from like-minded organizations to be part of the CTAP project and track how the government is spending COVID-19 funds.  However, when it came to implementing the action plans, most of the organizations in the Coalition had to be pushed.  They also looked up to us to provide funds for the Coalition to carry out their activities.   The Whatsapp group that we created was vibrant at first but the engagement on the platform started hitting a dead end when we couldn’t provide financial support for the activities.  

NIGERIA

The PHC campaign encountered other roadblocks, for example, meeting with the Executive Secretary of State Primary Health Care Development Agency (SPHCDA) in some States was next to impossible, insecurity in Kebbi and Imo States affected the campaign activities. In Kebbi State, the campaign was truncated. In Imo State, the campaign was completed after the safety of the FTM team was assured and the monopoly of mainstream media by the government hindered reportage of findings and outcomes in Ebonyi state.

Across the focal states, the robustness of evidence was hampered by difficulties in accessing government records, Incident Action plans, audit reports and performance reports, etc., relating to the disbursement of COVID-19 funds and management.  The broad unwillingness of officials to speak on the fiscal response of states was frustrating and inhibitory. The efforts of the researchers to access key documents from relevant offices and senior officials in the states were stunted by time constraints imposed by the study duration (period) and the unfavorable attitudes of officials. Specifically, the insistence of officials that such records can only be authorized by Executive Governors (Incident Commanders) implicates the strength and autonomy of public institutions and pervasive cultures of secrecy in the civil service. Due to malfunctional government websites, information was not easily accessible. To inhibit these, we hope to build stronger collaborations with the government, creating conducive platforms that would enhance political will for more openness with information sharing. We would request for ample time for project execution especially when  research is involved.

Insecurity in Kebbi and Imo States hampered the tracking of PHC in the region. The security of the team is of paramount importance and could not be jeopardized. 

In addition to the tracking of PHCs, the team was also very pertinent in telling the stories of Nigerians and how the pandemic affected their lives, sources of livelihood and the ability to scale through the economic hardship that came with the pandemic. To gather these stories, we tried to link the acclaimed government support most especially with the palliatives and the support funds that came in different forms and amounts to over N23tn. Our findings showed that the middle men looted most of these materials and funds. 

Notwithstanding all these challenges, we advocated and collaborated with governments in focus countries to provide and institute proper accountability along with procurement measures for all financial cum material donations received. Specifically

In Kenya, the CTAP team advocated and influenced policy by contributing to legislative amendments related to COVID-19 as follows:

1. Public Finance Management Act (Emergency response fund) regulations 2020 policy was developed.
2. Senate Adhoc Committee on COVID-19 situation committee requested the controller of budget and the Office of the Auditor-General to conduct a special audit report 
3. Submitted a memorandum on the public procurement and asset disposal (amendment) bill to the National Assembly. 

In Cameroon, we influenced institutional audit processes across the ministry of public health and ministry of Justice on the use of funds intended for the fight against the Coronavirus pandemic at a time when persistent information indicates “serious” financial embezzlement.

In Nigeria, our advocacy influenced documentation of COVID 19 fund disbursement by the Ministry of State, Budget and National Planning, providing the public with the breakdown of COVID-19 funds expenditure and the process of distribution. 

In Malawi, we collaborated with the Center For Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) to track a Covid-19 school expansion project in Salima District. Government officials were engaged and all relevant stakeholders mobilized to track down and prosecute the defaulting contractor. 

In Ghana, our advocacy, augmented through our partnerships with other CSOs and activists, resulted in the formulation of a parliamentary committee to review covid spending. Senior members of the Ghana Audit Service have also indicated in meetings their acquiescence to undertaking a forensic audit of covid spending in the coming months. 

In Sierra Leone, our advocacy with other civil society groups and the media prompted law enforcement agencies (the Anti-Corruption Commission) to investigate and prosecute erring officials involved in corruption cases related to covid-19 funds.

In Liberia, our advocacy with other civil society organizations and media institutions led to the national government accounting for covid-19 funds. It strengthened existing partnerships with antigraph institutions, making covid-19 public financial data accessible to citizens.

Our result has been due to our multi-dimensional project approach that is flexible and all encompassing to accommodate new challenges and trends in solving social issues and with more resources the CTAP has proven that it has the capacity to scale and deliver results even in challenging and high-risk countries.

As the world woke up to the news of a novel virus, and the World Health Organization classifying it a pandemic, the Africa continent was projected to be the most hit due to the poor state of our health centers coupled with systemic corruption and increasing migration of health personnels in search of better and sustainable remuneration in developed countries. 

In Nigeria, the state of health centers are lagging, as recent data shows Nigeria as one of the worst places for a woman to birth a child. In fact, a new study by the Economist Intelligence Unit, EIU, ranked Nigeria the least (80th out of the 80 countries considered) with the study with a score of 4.74 out of 10.

In the early days of the pandemic, most organizations folded up and retrenched staff due to lack of funding as most donor agencies withdrew their resources in order to adequately prepare for the unknown and unanticipated impact of the pandemic.

As an activist with multidimensional skills in turning complex problems into fundable projects, I remember the ideation process that led to the creation of the COVID Transparency and Accountability Project- brand. Instead of resorting to fate and hoping that the mandatory COVID 19 lock down order be removed by the federal government, CODE’s CEO Hamzat Lawal, challenged us to either “innovate or die ” and shared some strategies around tracking COVID 19 funds.

At the aim of CODE’s operations in Abuja Nigeria,  HQ staff dribbled in some ideas and so did our Follow the money International chapters. In less than twenty hours, we had two ideas and Immediately, I reviewed the available ideas and confirmed they were novel, fundable and scalable. So I reviewed and a full concept note and innovation was birthed and shared with partners and prospective donors.

Then, an opportunity appeared for a partnership with BudgIT, one of our strong allies in the sector and I quickly finalized on the concept note and shared with BudgIT team for inputs and after series of donor meetings and pitch sessions, we were able to access $500,000 from the Skoll and Conrad Hilton Foundation for the launch of the CTAP project in 7 African Countries (Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroun, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Malawi and Ghana). 

In Nigeria, the CTAP Project under CODE’s deliverables had diverse components including “Tracking the state of Primary Health Care (PHCs) and Vaccine distribution in Nigeria” in order to monitor the state of and vaccine storage in 15 States namely Cross River, Yobe, Bauchi, Gombe, Taraba, Abia, Anambra, Imo, Ebonyi, Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, Plateau, Kebbi, Osun States across the 6 geopolitical zones of Nigeria, and monitor and advocate for a transparent and inclusive approach on the distribution of COVID-19 Vaccines in Nigeria. The PHC tracking component was crafted to increase citizens participation in advocating for transparency and accountability in the health care sector by monitoring and reporting the state of PHCs across Nigeria.  

Follow The Money team members across the 15 states conducted intense tracking and data gathering using our designed toolkit on the kobotool box. The result of this intense research revealed that only about 20% of PHCs meet the required standards for infrastructure, personnel, service delivery, vaccine storage and vaccine administration. From this analysis, it could be inferred that only two (2) out of every ten (10) PHCs in Nigeria are up to standard. Further discoveries show that 30% of PHCs do not have access to clean and safe water, as some facilities use wells as their source of water and 7% use rain water. However, maternity and ante-natal service showed up as the most readily available and accessed service across Nigeria.

The follow the money team (FTM) teams in each of the 15 States soon after data collection on PHCs commenced Community outreach (CO) in May, 2021. They engaged with community stakeholders such as community head/chiefs, women leaders, men leaders, youth leaders. This activity was targeted at compiling evidence to advocate for the improvement of PHCs by engaging community gatekeepers in garnering community support for the tracking of COVID-19 vaccines, create awareness for the importance of the vaccines, and identify the level of knowledge about services the PHCs render. This activity revealed the disproportionate ratio of PHC to the size of each community and community leaders testified that vaccines were hoarded in some communities by health workers.

The final activity in CTAP tracking was the town hall meeting which held across all project States, it served as a rendezvous for health workers, representatives of local governments area councils, the Executive Secretaries of various States Primary Health Care Development Agency (SPHCDA), traditional heads, community chiefs, women leaders and men leader, to have a dialogue and map out an action plan for the standardization of PHCs to efficiently service the communities that host them as well as foster their preparedness for future COVID-19 vaccine administration. 

To further intensify the campaign and present our findings across these states for policy changes and institutional restructuring across PHC, our team states have further engaged with key stakeholders and partnered with frontline media agencies in amplifying the findings in their states.

We reviewed seven cases of COVID-19 related corruption, contacted witnesses, and gathered evidence. We also forwarded petitions to relevant prosecutory bodies. Six petitions were sent to ICPC(Independent Corrupt Practices Commission). ICPC reached out and has opened investigations into some of the cases upon receipt of our petitions. Our team is helping them with relevant facts/evidence in the cases.  

During the course of tracking the state of Primary Healthcare Centers (PHCs), the campaign garnered public and media attention in Osun State, South-West Nigeria, as conversations around the use of torch lights and candles to take delivery of babies in PHCs gathered momentum. According to public sources, the Osun State Government in 2019 received $20.5million from WHO as a grant to revitalize 332 PHCs. Less than two (2) years later, the revitalized PHCs are only visible with painted buildings but not in amenities.

Relying on findings during CTAP, the team influenced Rave 91.7 FM, a radio station with about 5.1 million listenership in Osun State, to carry-out more investigation on two (2) out of the six (6) PHCs we assessed. Find the story here. 

Two weeks after the findings were published, those two PHCs received brand new generators. The reporter who conducted the investigations, Emmanuel Ujiagughele, received the Best Reporter Award during the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) event in the State. Follow-up investigations were conducted by HumAngle, a notable reporting media in the State. The HumAngle publication of investigations made reference to FollowTheMoney/CTAP investigations uncovering gaps as well as the unresponsiveness of the State Government in being transparent and accountable for COVID-19 funds.

Another outstanding unanticipated success was entering into a formalized partnership with the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA), a parastatal under Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health responsible for the development of the primary health care delivery system, storage and distribution of vaccines in Nigeria. This partnership grants FollowTheMoney/CTAP access to all of the Agency’s data necessary for social accountability in the health sector as well as unfettered access to PHCs for joint monitoring and evaluation of health services, COVID-19 vaccine exercises and health intervention programmes across the Federation.

You can find women at the center of every social development initiative in Africa, having been grossly marginalized and left behind by their male counterparts. As the African continent evolves, its Agenda 2063 commits to improving women’s political participation through a more inclusive process for good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law. 

It is a fact that no nation can develop without a thriving woman population and so the Africa we want and will be proud of  is one where women have equal opportunities and platforms to participate, engage and influence policies at all levels without intimidation, hindrance, fear, but with full support.

According to Africa’s Barometer 2021, African countries are still far from achieving women’s equal and effective participation in political decision-making. Latest reports state that women constitute only 24 percent of the 12,113 parliamentarians in Africa, 25 per cent in the lower houses, and 20 per cent in the upper houses of parliament. While local government is often hailed as a training ground for women in politics, women constitute a mere 21 percent of councilors in 19 of the countries for which complete data could be obtained.

Despite the widespread adoption of and progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, Africa continues to lag behind most of the world when it comes to socioeconomic development. In fact, a recent report by the Sustainable Development Goals Center for Africa — Africa 2030: Sustainable Development Goals Three-Year Reality Check”—reveals that minimal progress has been made and, in some instances, there is complete stagnation. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has further amplified pre-existing inequalities creating new constraints to women’s participation in decision-making. 

As of 1 February 2021, over 3,5 million cases of COVID-19 had been recorded in Africa with 88,993 deaths. This accounts for approximately 3% of identified cases and 4% of deaths globally. There is limited sex disaggregated data available on cases and deaths due to COVID-19, as some countries disaggregate data, while others do not. 

It is therefore pertinent to prioritize and promote initiatives that are systematically designed to promote and stimulate meaningful collaborations, coalitions and networks for improved women participation geared towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in Africa and strategically close up the existing inequality gaps at all levels.

Based on the aforementioned, Engage, Educate and Empower Initiative (EEEI) through the Coalition of Women in Africa for Peace and Development (COWAP) launched an Annual African Women Summit aimed at harnessing the enormous capacity and goodwill of Women in Africa by bringing them under a coalition towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) centered around four thematic areas: Peace and justice, girl child education, ending hunger and ending poverty. COWAP seeks to localize the SDGs by illustratively understanding, elaborating, amplifying and establishing linkages and promoting partnerships and networks for women and girls to strive in the 21st Century at all levels in Africa. 

Connected Development (CODE) has over the years supported COWAP in amplifying their work and providing institutional support for the smooth implementation of diverse initiatives launched by EEEI including the AWS.

Kigali Rwanda (The Land of Thousand Hills) hosted the 3rd edition of the African Women Summit at Marriott Hotel Kigali from the 12th to 14th May 2022 with over three hundred (300) delegates from eighteen (18) African countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Benin Republic, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, South Africa, The Gambia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Canada, Namibia, Uganda, and Rwanda).

The event brought together dignitaries such as the First Lady of Nigeria; Her Excellency Aisha Buhari who was ably represented by Amb. Aishatu Aliyu Musa the Nigerian Ambassador to Rwanda, The Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the National Revenue Authority Sierra Leone; Dr. Mrs. Tuma Adama Gento-Kamara, The First Lady of Benue State; H.E Dr. Eunice Ortom Samuel, First lady of Bauchi State; H.E Hajiya Dr. Aisha Bala Mohammed, The Manager of Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) at African Development Bank; Marieme Esther Dassanou, Former African Union Youth Envoy; Aya Chebbi and members of the international community.

To provide programmatic support and project visibility support for the third edition held in Kigali, Rwanda from the 11th – 15th of May 2022, CODE sponsored me to represent the Chief Executive, Hamzat Lawal. Key outcomes from the third edition was the inauguration of a Technical Working Committee  made up of (​​Mrs. Maneng Sunday Patricia- Founder, Girls Empowerment Leadership Association, Thea Weeks- Guest- Lecturer, Facilitator, Motivational Speaker, Dr Antonel Olckers- CEO of DNAbiotec (Pty) Ltd, Dr Louisa Akaiso- Founder WWWA- Women Who Win Africa, Dr.Mrs. Tuma Adama Gento-Kamara- Chairperson of the Board of Directors, Dr. Mrs Tonyo Michael-Olomu- Lecturer, Federal University Otuoke, Bayelsa, Aya Chebbi- Former African Union Youth Envoy, Founder & Chair of Nala Feminist, Emmaline Datey- Public Speaker, Entrepreneur, Business Coach, Corporate Trainer, Marieme Esther Dassanou- Manger, Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa(AFAWA), African Development Bank Group and Pharmacist Isaac Onoja- CEO of Minds and Emotions Center) to coordinate and plan towards the AWS 2023 edition. Key results emanating from the summit are strong collaborations and partnerships by women groups towards influencing diverse social actions and making their voices count.

Personal learnings from this trip for me was the revolution of Rwanda from the genocide that plagued their land with over 1,000,000million lives sacrificed for the peaceful revolution they now embrace. The story of Rwanda is for every African and their leaders to emulate and take queue from, especially as it pertains to development, reforms, peace and security. Wars and conflicts have their fair cost, and the price of peace is unquantifiable. Rwanda is a living chronicle of a reinvented system that rests on the shoulders of Peace and Unity. 

As we plan ahead for the Annual Women Summit 2023, we anticipate that the initiative will garner public and donor support to provide the platform for more women to inspire, collaborate and network towards changing the narrative for improved women participation geared towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in Africa.

Lucy James Abagi is a passionate and result-oriented Fundraiser, Development Programmer and Innovator. Over the last five years, she has gathered vast layers of experience in managing diverse development programs, bid writing, responding to diverse solicitations by international donor agencies and writing winning proposals.

Twitter- @lucydavis2021

Instagram- @LucyJamesAbagi

LinkedIn-@LucyJamesAbagi

Facebook – @LucyJamesAbagi

The Mandate of Follow The Money (FTM) is to build citizens’ capacity to stop and uncover corruption in Africa. This mandate has birthed 9 Chapters and is still counting. 

The role of citizens in rescuing the continent from institutional and systemic corruption can not be underestimated. As a leading Pan African Movement, follow the money is taking intentional steps in supporting organizations in Africa to adopt its tracking model and strategy in achieving its accountability mandate.

The CTAP initiative provided the opportunity to support 4 FTM international chapters to track the utilization of COVID 19 funds in their countries. Kenya, Malawi, Liberia and Cameroon received some funding for CTAP in their country for a period of 12 months. And BudgIT supported 3 countries (Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone) Since the inception of these projects, massive results have been recorded providing a case for scalability across other African Countries.

In Liberia, the research conducted in Margibi County on the stimulus package for private schools’ teachers revealed  that only 15% of teachers in the private schools received their shares of the $1 million, while 85% of the participants did not receive their shares of the $1 million budgetary allocation for private schools’ teachers in the 2020/2021 national budget. We advocated for the release of funds to the right people. We have also engaged stakeholders to ensure accessibility is straightforward for the school teachers to access these funds. 

In Kenya, As of December 2020, the Government of Kenya had mobilized Kshs 214 Billion ($ 2,332,600 Million) through loans, for COVID-19 related expenses, out of which Kshs 162 Billion ($1,765,800 Million) was disbursed to Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDA’s) of County Governments. Out of the amount allocated to the County Governments, there was underutilization of funds, despite the urgency and needs brought about by the impact of the pandemic on citizens.

• Improved participation from government officials– Government officials from several County Governments were key informants in the tracking phase of the Kenya CTAP initiative. These included; Health & Water-Sanitation Chief officers who are in charge of authorizing the expenditure of department budgets, and County Executive Committee members-Health, who are the equivalent of Ministers on the County level. The aforementioned participated in a video interview, discussing the Covid-19 incidence in their respective counties, gaps identified and mitigation strategies for the same, which has been consolidated into a feature documentary produced by the FTM Kenya team at SIDAREC.

• Development of a Coalition coordination strategy– The first CTAP coalition building meeting held in April 2021 brought together 11 CSOs namely; Transparency International Kenya (TI-K), Shining Hope For Communities (Shofco), Kelin Kenya, International Budget Partnership Kenya (IBP-K), Uraia Trust, the Institute of Public Finance Kenya (IPF-K) and Association of Grassroots Journalists Kenya (AGJK). This has since grown to include Hivos, Development Gateway, Mzalendo and COVID-Kenya. The strategy paper encompasses a situation analysis (SWOT), communication/advocacy strategy, coalition resourcing strategy, expected outcome/impact and roles and responsibilities of the Coalition members. The document served as a roadmap to guide and consolidate collective advocacy efforts at the sub-national and the national levels in regards to enhancing transparency and accountability in public budgeting and contracting processes and access to information around COVID-19. 

In Cameroon, On March 29 2021, the Head of State through the Secretary-General at the Presidency in a letter instructed the Minister of Justice to initiate immediate judicial investigation against co-authors, authors or accomplices in the potential embezzlement of COVID 19 funds. While awaiting the outcome of this governmental investigation of itself ADE/CTAP released Press Statements commending the government for accelerating the call for public administrations to be audited for COVID funds. 

Due to our intense advocacy on CTAP, the President of the Republic of Cameroon Paul Biya ordered an audit on the use of funds for the fight against the Coronavirus pandemic at a time when persistent information indicated “serious” financial embezzlement. He directed  the Secretary-General, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh who ordered the Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze to release FCFA 32,555,000 to cover the audit costs for the Supreme State Control (CONSUPE) mission at the Ministry of Public Health. 

In July 29 2020, after the launch of CTAP in Cameroon, the Ministry of Health, citing “the urgent need for transparency”, published in a two-page press release, summary information on how it had spent FCFA 21,973,799,873 billion ($40,556,387.318 million), claiming that this was its total spending in response to COVID-19 within March to July, 2020. Though insufficient in details, this press release provided a baseline for further investigations on the expenditure of COVID funds in Cameroon.

In Malawi, CTAP Malawi released our research on how COVID funds were spent and exposed how several people from the government had mismanaged COVID-19 funds. Immediately after releasing this report, the president of Malawi Dr Lazarus Chakwera fired the Minister of Labour and arrested 19 officials who were involved in the mismanagement of Covid 19 funds. This was a success for CTAP in Malawi because even after the audit report on the COVID funds had come out and exposed the mismanagement of the funds, nothing was done until the CTAP report was shared in public domain.

In the second phase, We plan to upskill local groups and strengthen the operationalization of coalitions in sharpening conversations and engagement with governments on wider health sector accountability and transparent utilization of COVID 19 funds across more African countries.

As the world woke up to the news of a novel virus, and the World Health Organization classifying it a pandemic, the Africa continent was projected to be the most hit due to the poor state of our health centers coupled with systemic corruption and increasing migration of health personnels in search of better and sustainable remuneration in developed countries. 

In Nigeria, the state of health centers are lagging, as recent data shows Nigeria as one of the worst places for a woman to birth a child. In fact, a new study by the Economist Intelligence Unit, EIU, ranked Nigeria the least (80th out of the 80 countries considered) with the study with a score of 4.74 out of 10.

In the early days of the pandemic, most organizations folded up and retrenched staff due to lack of funding as most donor agencies withdrew their resources in order to adequately prepare for the unknown and unanticipated impact of the pandemic.

As an activist with multidimensional skills in turning complex problems into fundable projects, I remember the ideation process that led to the creation of the COVID Transparency and Accountability Project- brand. Instead of resorting to fate and hoping that the mandatory COVID 19 lock down order be removed by the federal government, CODE’s CEO Hamzat Lawal, challenged us to either “innovate or die ” and shared some strategies around tracking COVID 19 funds.

At the aim of CODE’s operations in Abuja Nigeria,  HQ staff dribbled in some ideas and so did our Follow the money International chapters. In less than twenty hours, we had two ideas and Immediately, I reviewed the available ideas and confirmed they were novel, fundable and scalable. So I reviewed and a full concept note and innovation was birthed and shared with partners and prospective donors.

Then, an opportunity appeared for a partnership with BudgIT, one of our strong allies in the sector and I quickly finalized on the concept note and shared with BudgIT team for inputs and after series of donor meetings and pitch sessions, we were able to access $500,000 from the Skoll and Conrad Hilton Foundation for the launch of the CTAP project in 7 African Countries (Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroun, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Malawi and Ghana). 

In Nigeria, the CTAP Project under CODE’s deliverables had diverse components including “Tracking the state of Primary Health Care (PHCs) and Vaccine distribution in Nigeria” in order to monitor the state of and vaccine storage in 15 States namely Cross River, Yobe, Bauchi, Gombe, Taraba, Abia, Anambra, Imo, Ebonyi, Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, Plateau, Kebbi, Osun States across the 6 geopolitical zones of Nigeria, and monitor and advocate for a transparent and inclusive approach on the distribution of COVID-19 Vaccines in Nigeria. The PHC tracking component was crafted to increase citizens participation in advocating for transparency and accountability in the health care sector by monitoring and reporting the state of PHCs across Nigeria.  

Follow The Money team members across the 15 states conducted intense tracking and data gathering using our designed toolkit on the kobotool box. The result of this intense research revealed that only about 20% of PHCs meet the required standards for infrastructure, personnel, service delivery, vaccine storage and vaccine administration. From this analysis, it could be inferred that only two (2) out of every ten (10) PHCs in Nigeria are up to standard. Further discoveries show that 30% of PHCs do not have access to clean and safe water, as some facilities use wells as their source of water and 7% use rain water. However, maternity and ante-natal service showed up as the most readily available and accessed service across Nigeria.

The follow the money team (FTM) teams in each of the 15 States soon after data collection on PHCs commenced Community outreach (CO) in May, 2021. They engaged with community stakeholders such as community head/chiefs, women leaders, men leaders, youth leaders. This activity was targeted at compiling evidence to advocate for the improvement of PHCs by engaging community gatekeepers in garnering community support for the tracking of COVID-19 vaccines, create awareness for the importance of the vaccines, and identify the level of knowledge about services the PHCs render. This activity revealed the disproportionate ratio of PHC to the size of each community and community leaders testified that vaccines were hoarded in some communities by health workers.

The final activity in CTAP tracking was the town hall meeting which held across all project States, it served as a rendezvous for health workers, representatives of local governments area councils, the Executive Secretaries of various States Primary Health Care Development Agency (SPHCDA), traditional heads, community chiefs, women leaders and men leader, to have a dialogue and map out an action plan for the standardization of PHCs to efficiently service the communities that host them as well as foster their preparedness for future COVID-19 vaccine administration. 

To further intensify the campaign and present our findings across these states for policy changes and institutional restructuring across PHC, our team states have further engaged with key stakeholders and partnered with frontline media agencies in amplifying the findings in their states

We reviewed seven cases of COVID-19 related corruption, contacted witnesses, and gathered evidence. We also forwarded petitions to relevant prosecutory bodies. Six petitions were sent to ICPC(Independent Corrupt Practices Commission). ICPC reached out and has opened investigations into some of the cases upon receipt of our petitions. Our team is helping them with relevant facts/evidence in the cases.  

During the course of tracking the state of Primary Healthcare Centers (PHCs), the campaign garnered public and media attention in Osun State, South-West Nigeria, as conversations around the use of torch lights and candles to take delivery of babies in PHCs gathered momentum. According to public sources, the Osun State Government in 2019 received $20.5million from WHO as a grant to revitalize 332 PHCs. Less than two (2) years later, the revitalized PHCs are only visible with painted buildings but not in amenities.

Relying on findings during CTAP, the team influenced Rave 91.7 FM, a radio station with about 5.1 million listenership in Osun State, to carry-out more investigation on two (2) out of the six (6) PHCs we assessed. Find the story here. 

Two weeks after the findings were published, those two PHCs received brand new generators. The reporter who conducted the investigations, Emmanuel Ujiagughele, received the Best Reporter Award during the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) event in the State. Follow-up investigations were conducted by HumAngle, a notable reporting media in the State. The HumAngle publication of investigations made reference to FollowTheMoney/CTAP investigations uncovering gaps as well as the unresponsiveness of the State Government in being transparent and accountable for COVID-19 funds.

Another outstanding unanticipated success was entering into a formalized partnership with the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA), a parastatal under Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health responsible for the development of the primary health care delivery system, storage and distribution of vaccines in Nigeria. This partnership grants FollowTheMoney/CTAP access to all of the Agency’s data necessary for social accountability in the health sector as well as unfettered access to PHCs for joint monitoring and evaluation of health services, COVID-19 vaccine exercises and health intervention programmes across the Federation.

Every year, the Nigerian government chunks out billions of Naira to launch communal social projects targeted to benefit millions of rural lives across different constituencies. Constituency projects are community projects nominated into a budget by a particular legislator. In recent times there have been several controversies around the nomination and implementation of constituency projects as the reality is that any similar project articulated by an agency or ministry for the same community is not seen as a constituency project.

In Nigeria, The national and state assemblies consist  of 360 elected members of the House of Representatives, who represent the Nation’s 360 Federal Constituencies 109 Senators. (Three Senators per state and one from FCT) (Okon, 2004). Constituency projects were created to ensure a minimum presence of government in every constituency by having some grass-roots projects sited in each, during the budgeting process. Legislators thus identify projects which they wish to be cited in their constituencies for inclusion in the budget, with a financial ceiling for the budgetary provisions for such projects in each constituency.

According to Premium Times, at the federal level, N100 billion naira is budgeted annually for constituency projects and the annual N100 billion is always shared on an agreed 60:40 percent ratio by the two legislative chambers. The House of Representatives takes the bulk with N60 billion and the senate with N40 billion. By interpretation, the 360 members of the lower chamber have N60 billion to initiate, implement, or complete projects in their constituencies while the 109 members in the senate have N40 billion to do the same. 

Most of these projects are earmarked to provide diverse solutions and support ranging from provision of healthcare services, educational interventions and learning facilities, construction, rehabilitation and renovation of school facilities, women and youth empowerment programs. Here’s the problem: the structural framework including the nomination, implementation and monitoring of this project are not in the public space. Most intriguing findings gathered from years of community work is the non-awareness and involvement of citizens/benefitting population at all levels of these projects, non-transparent selection criteria and beneficiaries of these projects and the lack of sustainable impact due to the different stages of discrepancies in the execution process.

Connected Development with support from John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur over the past four years has activated citizen-led monitoring interventions in Kaduna State. The first three years of the ON Nigeria project focused on tracking UBE funding in kaduna State through the activation of school monitoring teams who track projects across 20 communities worth 569 million Naira (USD 1.5 million) leading to a shift in Kaduna State education policy through the adoption of our project nomination and monitoring tools by the state government and an ultimate increase in school enrollment across focus schools and impacting an estimated 200,000 lives.

Due to the recorded impact, the foundation scaled our innovation to another 2 years focused on tracking Constituency projects across 3 senatorial districts (Southern, Central and Northern) in Kaduna State. We commenced the ‘Deepening Citizens Interest in Government’s Spendings and Addressing Accompanying Corrupt Practices Project Phase 2 (DeSPAAC 2.0 ) in Kaduna State, Under the On Nigeria 2.0 Joinbodi Cohort in December 2020. Specifically, This project is aimed at increasing citizens’ interests in government spendings and expenditures around constituency projects across the State through tracking and monitoring government projects in 18 communities across the three senatorial districts in the State namely; Kaduna North, Kaduna South and Kaduna Central. In the first year of this project phase, We adopted diverse designs and utilized different strategies ranging from conducting series of advocacy visit to stakeholders representing Kaduna State in the National and State House of Assemblies, activating community monitoring team who through our capacity building have activated 23 campaigns, hosted series of community outreaches and town hall meeting across the three senatorial zones in the State.

Representing my CEO, Hamzat Lawal, I led CODE’s team members across the 3 senatorial district for a state-wide town hall meeting aimed at strengthening the knowledge of over 176 participants and stakeholders including (traditional leaders, the district heads, religious leaders, Executive Secretary from the KADSUBEB, the School Based Management Committee (SBMC) Chairmen, the Ward Development Committee (WDC) Chairmen and secretaries, the representatives of various MDAs) on the project nomination and monitoring tool developed during the stakeholders retreat in Abuja, as well as the procedure for engaging state and national legislatures on constituency projects.

One interesting angle this story recorded was from the SBMC Chairman of Sabon Gari LGA, he stated that “it is clear that our representatives only come to us when they need our votes, and reject us when we need them”. All observations made pointed towards the need for social accountability. Hence, the importance of an efficient communication mechanism which citizens could use in communicating with their representatives. 

In order to amplify government designed tools for reporting projects implementation in Kaduna State, the participants were guided through the process of downloading the Eyes and Ears App with which citizens can use in giving updates on any project being implemented within a 2km radius. Interesting to note that the representative of the Kaduna State Planning and Budget Commission (PBC), Tara Jeremiah, urged SBMCs and others to go to SUBEB or the Ministry of Education, through the office of the Project Unit to request for information in their bid for demanding accountability.

Town hall meetings are effective advocacy strategies that provide platforms for dialogue between the supply side of government and the citizens demand side. After our series of townhall meetings the following major outcome were harvested

• The lawmaker representing Kaduna South Federal Constituency (APC – Kaduna) in the House of Representatives, Mukhtar Ahmed hosted a town hall meeting to respond to issues raised by his constituency. 
• In the three zones of Kaduna state, the Ward Development Committee in Chikaji, Sabon-Gari, Zaria rejected the building as an attempt was made to hand over the project of primary health care center in Chikaji, Sabon-Gari Zaria worth 50,000,000 by Senator Sule Abdu Kwari; Senator representing Kaduna North Senatorial District which was incomplete and despite all the defeats noticed in the building. This result shows that the community members are becoming more aware of the power they hold as citizens and demanding accountability at all levels.  

The first year of The DeeSPAC campaign has ensured the implementation of projects in areas of Health, Education, Wash, and Environment in Kaduna State, providing citizens with the right approach and tools for engaging their lawmakers. 

Specifically, CODE has strengthened the capacity of 118 Community Monitoring Teams (CMTs) and the legislators; jointly monitored project implementation across 23 projects in 30 communities reaching a population of over 791,000 people across the 3 senatorial zones of Kaduna state worth 1.2Billion Naira; enhanced the prosecutory capacity of the ICPC through bridging the gap between the anti-graft agent and the communities; increased community awareness on citizens’ engagement with government through the OGP; developed a constituency Project nomination/monitoring tools in collaboration with legislators and other critical stakeholders; as well as enhanced citizens’ engagement in constituency project implementation in the state through Follow The Money Radio Kaduna (on-going) and town hall meetings. Project implementation has been completed in 12 projects, ongoing in 5 and abandoned/ not started in the remaining 6. 

In designing this project, we drafted activities that feed all value chains, spurring citizens to take actions through knowledge acquisition of constituency projects and stakeholders engagement strategy while redirecting the lawmakers to re-engineer their approach thereby adopting community driven approach in the nomination and implementation of project hitherto ensuring the needs of the people are well captured and prioritized. 

Follow the link to the status of constituency project in Kaduna State. We urge more citizens, community based organizations and civil society campaigns to utilize this information in championing community action towards ensuring accountability and transparency in governance. 

Activism is a vigorous action channel to create a change or shift in policies. Activism is a process not just an action, it consists of different actions. When there needs to be a change in a system, activism is always the medium for change. Using Nigeria as a case study, Nigeria has moved from different phases of policies and changes and one very active medium of these changes has been Activism. You are often not ready to make a change if you are not an activist. 

Activism can be carried out in different ways depending on the issues and the effects or impact it wants to create. Let us look at a few of them that can be used in our daily activities.

TYPES OF ACTIVISM

1. Self Advocacy: This is a one-man-led action designed to effectively communicate one’s interest, desires, or rights.
2. Group Advocacy: This is a structured action or set of activities involving a group of people with common interest and desires channeled at influencing public policies and laws. 
3. Citizen Driven Advocacy: Enables people within a specific local community to amplify their voices and make decisions on diverse social issues that affect their lives.

Activism is a legal medium or process to change policies and laws. In the case of Nigeria, I have deployed citizen-driven advocacy to effect communal social change as a development worker. Let me share my experiences with you in my journey as a citizen advocate.

Nigeria is a great nation, but millions of its citizens cannot resonate with the reality of a failed country. As there are no reasons why over 86 percent of its gifted population live below #500 ($1). Nigeria is a wealthy nation, but hunted by the inability to be intentional with its selection of leaders to preside and manage the enormous natural and human resources. Every election year we are overpowered by the same reality of sticking to leaders who have lost their conscience and lack the capacity to ensure equality of access to basic social amenities. 

Young men and women have raised their voices in different aspects of protest. The most recent was the #Endsars Protest. This protest was properly organized without any form of violence and deep in my heart, I desired that the voices of youths would be heard. 

For over a week, the movement received fortifications and support. We were as close as our minds convinced us that we were. Our youths were ready to change the narratives until our leaders killed and smashed our hopes. Nailing the future of its youth population bulge on the pillars of the Nigerian Flag. 

As a development worker, I have avoided the media platform because of spontaneous inner anger that is driven by series of field interventions that I have engaged in, having actively participated in and led about 200 development campaigns across 8 Africa countries and over 200 rural communities, gathering first-hand data on massive inequality and human deprivation of basic social amenities and thus an opportunity to air my view on any media platform be it radio or TV will result in an explosive rant. Anger lies in the bosom of every Nigerian citizen. 

No matter how secure you are, the crippling state of the Nigerian system catches up with you either directly or indirectly. Most households have lost lives to poor health care services, stray bullets have killed countless uprising talents.  

Education which is expected to be the hope and foundation for building a sustainable and globally competitive nation has been denied the growing mass of young people in Nigeria.

With a deep-seated passion to drive change at all levels, especially across marginalized communities, I channeled my anger into finding solutions by designing programs to support diverse initiatives in order to cushion the effect of poor leadership, accountability and transparency across communities in Nigeria and Africa. 

As part of citizen-driven advocacy strategy, I deploy program design skills to strategically map out guidelines that project and frame an idea into tiny segments that will aid the timely achievement of the project impact within agreed cost. As simple as this may sound, this takes a lot of ideation and design thinking protocols. Most innovative people lack this skill and usually have a broad result that they seek to achieve without a well charted out step by step approach. 

It also incorporates project implementation and decision-making skills. From experience, I have learnt that decision-making is the most valuable skill for every project manager. To successfully design result-oriented programs, It is important to acquire a project management skill that will comprehensively provide you with hands-on experience in other relatable fields.

One major way to advocate for change beyond participating in organized protest is for every Nigerian youth and citizen to be actively involved in casting one’s vote during elections. Voting is a vital right an individual enjoys as a citizen of a community, goes a long way to influence the leadership positions across communities.

“Activism, My Way” is a series that is designed to share with you my journey as a development worker, how I have successfully designed and implemented over 20 development projects, how I strive to live a balanced life, as a working wife and mother, how I stay fit and sane while contributing my quota to changing the world. 

In my follow-up articles, I will take you through my design processes including implementation and field experiences with accompanying human angle stories from benefiting communities. 

Everyone at every point in time needs to get involved in activism whether at personal or citizen level to effect change in their lives and communities. I look forward to hearing from you on how you have become an activist. 

Source: social care institute for excellence

*** Lucy Jamess Abagi is a passionate and result-oriented Fundraiser, Development Programmer and Innovator. Over the last five years, she has gathered vast layers of experience in managing diverse development programs,  bid writing, responding to diverse solicitations by international donor agencies and writing winning proposals. 

Twitter- @lucydavis2021

Instagram- @LucyJamesAbagi

LinkedIn-@LucyJamesAbagi

Facebook – @LucyJamesAbagi