By Abdulazeez Abdulmalik Hussaini, Programmes Manager.

On November 3, millions of Americans walked into polling stations and sent a message to the people in power. Counting is still going on and the final tallies will take time to settle, but projections from several outlets, including CNN, show Democrats taking the House and the Senate away from the party of a sitting president. Whatever the final numbers, the lesson is already clear. In a democracy that is allowed to work, an election is a performance review, and the people are the employer. Nigeria heads into 2027 with the same power in the hands of its citizens. The question is whether we will use it.

The first lesson is that the citizen is the strongest institution. Protest votes do not happen by accident. They happen when ordinary people decide that frustration must be carried from the roadside, the market and the WhatsApp group into the ballot box. A government that tightens the economy, ignores suffering and treats criticism as disloyalty can only be corrected peacefully by one tool, and that tool is the voter’s card. For Nigerians, the message is simple. Collect your PVC. Verify your name on the register. Turn up on election day, stay to watch the count, and protect your result. Anger that stays at home changes nothing. Anger that votes changes everything.

The second lesson is that the judiciary must be a referee, not a player. Courts are the last line of defence for a credible election. When they act swiftly, independently and with open reasoning, they reassure citizens that their votes will count. When they are drawn into manufacturing outcomes, the whole system loses trust. Politicians must also bear responsibility here. Too many treat the courtroom as a second campaign ground, filing cases not because the law demands it but because they hope a technicality will deliver what the electorate refused. A judiciary that lets itself be used this way hands power to people who could not win it fairly. The courts should resolve genuine disputes quickly and fairly, and refuse to become a back door to power.

The third lesson falls squarely on the Independent National Electoral Commission, which must earn the trust it is asking for. No amount of citizen enthusiasm can rescue an election run on a register nobody believes. Confidence in the outcome starts long before polling day, and it starts with the list of who is allowed to vote.

First, INEC must disclose the full and uncompromised register of voters across the country. The commission has said the register has passed 103 million names after biometric clean-up and has fixed December 15 for the final version, with the presidential and National Assembly elections due on January 16. That is a very short runway. Political parties and civil society groups have already raised questions about deceased voters, duplicate entries, underage registration and doubtful photographs, and INEC itself has admitted that some registration officers introduced AI-generated photographs into the preliminary register. The commission says it will remove about 1.5 million irregular entries before certification. The answer to doubt is openness: publish the register in full and in searchable form, let parties and observers inspect it at polling unit level, and explain every removal and addition. A register that can survive public scrutiny is the best protection INEC has against accusations of manipulation.

Second, INEC must take seriously the growing public concern about officials who have family members with an interest in the elections serving in sensitive positions. This is a basic conflict of interest rule, and it applies in every serious democracy. An official whose spouse, sibling or child is a candidate, a party agent or a beneficiary of the outcome cannot be trusted by the other side, however honest that official may be. Perception matters as much as conduct. INEC should require declarations of interest from staff in sensitive roles, publish its redeployment decisions and the reasons for them, and move quickly when credible concerns are raised. Doing so protects the officials as much as the public.

Third, INEC must build a reliable and trustworthy firewall for election stakeholders. Voters, party agents, observers, journalists and ad hoc staff all depend on the system being closed to interference. That means tight control over who can access voter data and result systems. In June, INEC confirmed that a voter’s record had been accessed through credentials issued to registration staff and released without authority, which shows how real the risk is. It also means independent audit trails for result transmission, real-time public posting of polling unit results, and clear separation between election officials, security agencies and party interests. And it means protecting the safety of corps members and staff who do the work on the ground.

To be fair, INEC has acknowledged public concerns, promised to publish the preliminary register online and pointed to the credible reception of recent off-cycle elections as evidence of improvement. Promises are a start. The 2027 test is whether they are kept openly, on schedule and in a form every Nigerian can check. Americans can see how their votes are counted, precinct by precinct, with observers from both sides watching. That transparency is a large part of why even bitter losers tend to accept the result. Nigerians deserve nothing less.

The media and the campaigns have their own part to play, and it begins with questions. America’s election season is loud, but its strongest moments come when journalists press candidates on records, numbers and promises. Nigeria needs that discipline. Media houses should fact-check claims in real time, give opposition voices fair airtime and resist the pull of paid propaganda dressed as news. Campaigns, for their part, owe citizens substance. Tell us how many schools you will build, how you will fund them and by when. Tell us what happened to the promises of the last cycle. A campaign built on rented crowds, branded rice and slogans is a campaign with nothing to offer. Citizens should reward candidates who show up with plans and punish those who show up with songs.

There is also a hard truth that every government should hear: oppression is a dangerous strategy for incumbents. Pressure on opposition parties, whether through intimidation, harassment, arbitrary legal pressure or blocking their access to the public, rarely produces the loyalty it seeks. It produces sympathy for the targeted, anger among the watching public and a larger protest vote than any opposition could have organised alone. Opposition parties have publicly alleged pressure of this kind ahead of 2027, and those allegations deserve open answers rather than dismissal. When people see rivals silenced, they do not conclude that the government is strong. They conclude that it is afraid. A confident government competes on its record. A fearful one competes by closing doors. Voters have always known the difference, and in 2027 they will know it again.

A word now for every Nigerian who will be approached with a bag of rice, a few thousand naira or a promise on a banner: do not sell your conscience for peanuts. Ask a simple question of every candidate and every officeholder seeking another term: what have you actually delivered? Where are the hospitals that work, the schools that teach and the businesses that lifted people out of poverty? If someone held office for years without building anything that changed lives, a sudden generosity during campaign season is not kindness. It is a purchase of your vote at the cheapest possible price.

Treat bold claims with the same care. Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago of Niger State has said publicly that graduates working on his farm earn N500,000 a month, a figure above what many government agencies and private employers pay. Citizens are entitled to ask for evidence. Where are these enterprises registered? Who owns them? How many people do they employ? What have they paid in taxes? What profit do they make that can sustain such salaries? Claims that cannot survive these questions should be treated as campaign talk, not as record. A vote is worth more than a handout, and it lasts four years while the handout lasts one afternoon.

To those who use power to silence opponents, and to the spokespeople, advisers and praise-singers who defend every excuse with a straight face, history keeps records, and it is rarely generous. Every era has had people who were skilled at defending the indefensible. Their speeches were polished and their denials were confident. Yet when the power faded, what remained was the record of what they did and what they excused. Their grandchildren read it. Their communities remember it. Eloquence in service of deception does not earn forgiveness, it only makes the record more damning. You still have time to choose differently. Defend the truth, protect the vote, and let the people decide freely. Those who stand with the electorate will be remembered kindly. Those who stand against it will be remembered for exactly that.

America reminded the world that voters can still hold power to account. Nigerians can do the same, but only if our institutions play their part. Citizens must register, vote, watch, protect their results, resist outside interference and refuse to be bought. INEC must open the register, remove conflicts of interest and guard the system. Together, these are what turn a vote into a verdict.

Edited By: Nankpak Cirfat

By Abdulmalik Yahya (The Punsmith)

If there’s a way I’ll tell the tales of Link and Learn,

I will start from the wow

of widely narrow roads that take two bouncing nganyas.

---

From Tanzania to Denmark,

From Kenya to Poland,

From Naija to the world,

From left wheel to right wheel,

solution pathways paved ways

for a future so divine,

primed with the vision of a million bulbs.

---

Of life

of life,

nature met me with melting drizzles,

cold mornings and cloudy skies,

while Nairobi woke to another beautiful chaos.

---

Matatus painted in colours,

horns composing their own symphonies,

traffic testing the patience of saints,

and strangers making strangers feel at home.

Karibu, karibu!

The warmth of a greeting,

the taste of ugali,

the stories served with every meal.

---

And somewhere between the streets and the sessions,

between unfamiliar accents and familiar dreams,

I found pieces of home in distant places.

---

I missed the opening,

for Nairobi welcomed me that morning,

but perhaps I arrived just in time

for the conversations that mattered.

---

The bilaterals,

where grantees sat across from grantees,

exchanging more than project experiences.

We shared our struggles,

our little victories,

the lessons hidden in our failures,

and possibilities waiting to be explored.

---

From one table to another,

I learnt that no one holds all the answers.

That Africa has much to offer,

and much to learn.

That Europe, too, has stories worth sharing.

And that collaboration is not merely

the joining of hands,

but the willingness to understand

what the other hand has carried.

---

We spoke of solutions,

of pathways and possibilities,

of young people whose ideas deserve a place

where decisions are made.

Of communities that must not just be heard,

but seen in the policies that shape their lives.

---

Different lands, different tongues,

different wheels turning on different roads,

yet the same hopes kept finding their way

into our conversations.

---

Perhaps this is what Link and Learn means:

to link our little lights

until the darkness has nowhere to hide;

to learn that borders may divide our maps,

but must never limit our minds.

---

And when the rain finally settles,

when the nganyas find their final stops,

when familiar faces become distant memories,

I will carry more than photographs

and souvenirs from Nairobi.

---

I will carry the laughter,

the lessons, the friendships,

the warmth of strangers turned to companions,

and the beautiful thought

that somewhere beyond our borders,

someone is working towards the same tomorrow.

Asante, Nairobi.

Asante, my fellow dreamers.

---

If there’s a way I’ll tell the tales of Link and Learn,

I will begin with the wow,

but I may never find the words

to tell just how much I learnt.

What I did not expect when I became responsible for an organisation

By Hyeladzira James Mshelia | Ag. Chief Executive, Connected Development [CODE]

You know how they say newlyweds are not yet qualified to give marriage advice?  Well, I feel a little the same way about leadership. I have not been in this seat long enough to start handing out leadership lessons as though I have figured everything out. I am still learning, still asking questions, still getting things wrong and, hopefully, getting better at getting things right.

So, this is not leadership advice. Just a few things I have noticed since stepping into the role.

One of them is how much thinking leadership requires. I knew there would be meetings, decisions, deadlines, difficult conversations, budgets, programmes, donors and staff. What I did not anticipate was how much of the work would continue in my head long after the meeting ended or the laptop was closed.

I find myself thinking about CODE even when I am not working. A simple programme review can send me down a rabbit hole of questions. Is the technical approach sound? Do we have the right team and resources? Are we meeting donor expectations? And, ultimately, is what we are doing moving the organisation in the right direction? I did not realise how much mental energy leadership would require until I stepped into the role. So much of the work happens in your head, behind the scenes, as you weigh options, anticipate risks and think through decisions. This is especially true when dealing with technical issues where the answers are not always straightforward.

Leadership requires strategic thinking, but strategy cannot exist in isolation from the quality of the work being delivered. You still need to understand whether the programme design makes sense, whether the evidence supports the approach, whether the team understands what it is we are trying to achieve, and whether the organisation can stand behind its work.

I have also come to understand that you can delegate a task, but you cannot delegate your responsibility for the outcome. That distinction has taken me some time to understand. Leadership is not about doing everything yourself. It is about creating enough trust and structure for others to do their work while remaining accountable for the direction and quality of the organisation. That means knowing when to ask questions, when to step in, when to step back and when to let someone else own a problem.

You begin to see the organisation as a system rather than a collection of individual tasks. You stop looking only at what is happening and start thinking about why it is happening, what it might lead to and what else it might affect. But this also comes with a challenge: your mind can start treating everything as equally important. It is not. If everything occupies the same amount of mental space, eventually, you become the bottleneck.

So I am learning to distinguish between what requires my attention, what requires my decision, what belongs with someone else and what can simply wait. Responsibility has a way of making everything feel urgent, but leadership requires prioritising not just tasks, but attention. I am also learning that thinking is not the same as progressing. There is a point where analysis has done its job and a decision has to follow. You can spend so much time considering every possible consequence that you delay the very action you were trying to get right. Knowing when you need more information and when you have enough to decide is a discipline in itself.

I am still learning that too. You can be experienced, competent and prepared for the responsibilities of a role and still discover new dimensions of it once you are actually carrying it.

For me, the unexpected dimension has been how much of leadership happens internally. Sometimes the hardest part is not making the decision. It is deciding what deserves your attention in the first place.

About the author

Hyeladzira James Mshelia is the Acting Chief Executive of Connected Development [CODE], a civic accountability organisation headquartered in Abuja, Nigeria. CODE works across Africa on governance, accountability, gender justice and community empowerment. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), a Climate Reality Leader and a 2023 Twink Frey Visiting Social Activist at the University of Michigan.

By Abdulmalik Yahya, Programs Officer, Connected Development (CODE)

Last week, my friend Ahmad shared a message that has stayed with me. He had just registered a school in Maiha, a local government area in Adamawa State, Northeastern Nigeria, and his bank needed proof of address to open an account for it. So he went to the Maiha Water Board for a utility bill. This was the answer he got: “Maiha Water Board does not issue receipts because they are not pumping water to any resident. Water is fetched free at their premises only.”

We laughed. Then the laughter ran dry, much like the pipes. Ahmad looked for proof he was a customer. Instead, he found evidence that the Board no longer supplied water to residents.

Look closely, and the joke stops being funny. Ahmad did not file a Freedom of Information request. He did not need to know the law existed. He walked in for a receipt and walked out with a fact that should have been public long before: a water board that no longer supplies water to residents. He saw no announcement, no notice, and no public record explaining what happened, when, or what is being done about it. The truth slipped out by accident, through one man’s errand. That is how information travels at the grassroots in Nigeria: by chance, not by right.

Fifteen years after the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act was signed, the machinery meant to make it work is still missing. Data from the FOI Unit of the Federal Ministry of Justice consistently show that fewer than 20 percent of public institutions have designated FOI desk officers, and that is counting federal institutions alone. If the federal level looks like this, picture a water board in Maiha. Yet the law reaches it too. On 11 April 2025, the Supreme Court ruled in a case brought by civil society groups against the Edo State Agency for the Control of AIDS that the FOI Act binds all 36 states and their agencies, not only federal ministries, departments and agencies. The old excuse is gone, yet journalists and civil society groups meeting in Enugu in February 2026 observed that several state governments still resist implementing the Act. What remains is the work: state and local institutions must designate FOI officers, publish their contacts, and disclose, without waiting to be asked, the basic facts about the services they are paid to deliver. If Maiha Water Board had pinned that one sentence on its gate, Ahmad would have saved himself a trip.

Maiha was not the only place where I encountered this silence. I have seen the same problem in my work on public health financing, where the stakes extend beyond access to basic services to the government’s ability to prepare for and respond to disease outbreaks.

Under Project Track-BHCPF, a Global Health Advocacy Incubator Capstone project, we tracked funds released through the NCDC Gateway of the Basic Health Care Provision Fund, the only channel within the Fund that directly supports disease surveillance, outbreak response, laboratory systems, and emergency coordination. I sent three FOI requests asking how much of that money was disbursed to states between 2024 and 2025, how the funds were utilised, and the mechanisms used in sharing the fund. This is money meant to help states detect and respond to outbreaks before they become emergencies.

Section 4 of the FOI Act gives an institution seven days to release information or explain in writing why it will not. Only one institution responded, and to their credit, the data they shared was usable. The other two gave us something louder than a refusal: silence.

Silence is harder to fight than a “no.” A written denial can be challenged. Silence is a door that neither opens nor locks. When an institution doesn’t respond, the consequences go beyond a missed deadline. Citizens cannot verify whether public money reached its intended destination, journalists cannot test official claims against records, and civil society organisations lose valuable time pursuing information that should already be accessible. The burden shifts from the institution responsible for keeping the records to the citizen trying to obtain them.

The law says we can go to court, but anyone who has priced litigation in Nigeria knows justice does not come cheap: filing fees, legal fees and adjournments that stretch into years. For a civil society organisation, and even more for someone like Ahmad, the cost of forcing an agency to answer can outweigh the value of the answer. A right that only the wealthy can enforce is hardly a right. Citizens need an accessible administrative appeal process that lets them challenge non-response without first hiring a lawyer.

The only response I got was the exception, not the rule. According to an official cited by The Guardian in 2025, only 91 of roughly 800 public institutions have complied with the FOI Act. A joint report by the International Press Centre (IPC), Centre for Media and Society (CEMESO) and Media Rights Agenda (MRA) found that between 2023 and 2025, only 9 to 13 institutions set aside any funds for FOI activities. A law without a budget is a promise without a purse. Until every public institution has a budget line for FOI, a trained desk officer and proper records, compliance will depend on the goodwill of whoever sits at the desk that day.

I carried these frustrations to the National Access to Information Summit 2026, where I represented Connected Development as a panellist. The Federal Ministry of Justice organised the summit, with support from the Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption (RoLAC II) Programme and International IDEA. My submission was that strengthening compliance must begin with an independent FOI commission, an oversight body with sanctioning power, alongside real investment in public institutions’ capacity to meet their obligations. The current oversight arrangement also raises questions about independence. The IPC, CEMESO, and MRA report notes that the Attorney-General’s office, the supposed oversight body, sometimes defends institutions that fail to comply with the FOI Act in court rather than holding them accountable.

An independent FOI commission should have a clear statutory mandate to receive complaints, order the release of information where legally appropriate, monitor statutory response deadlines, and enforce compliance within powers conferred by law. Citizens should be able to challenge non-response through a simple, affordable administrative process without first having to hire a lawyer. The commission should also publish regular compliance reports showing which institutions respond, which default, and what corrective action follows.

Ahmad’s school will find another way to prove its address. Nigerians are resourceful like that. But we should not have to be resourceful to get what the law already owes us. In Maiha, people fetch water for free at the Board’s premises. Information should flow the same way: free, available at the source, and collected without a fight. When public offices go quiet, researchers are not the only ones who lose. The community doesn’t know why its taps have run dry, and the state can’t prepare for the next outbreak because citizens cannot follow the money meant for surveillance.

Transparency should not be a pipe dream. Nigeria needs public institutions that disclose the status of their services, account for the money entrusted to them, and answer legitimate requests for information within the time the law allows. The next Ahmad who knocks on a public office door should leave with an answer, not an excuse.

By Amina Onayi Lawal, Programs Officer,

We had planned activities to directly benefit more than 800 secondary school students and indirectly reach over 5,000 young Nigerians. We had brought partners together and worked on how to keep our civic clubs active beyond the lifespan of a project. Then strike action disrupted public schools in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), putting our planned activities on hold.

For us at Connected Development (CODE), this is a frustrating setback. For the children whose education has been interrupted, the consequences are far more serious. Their learning cannot simply be rescheduled without a cost.

As the Power of Voices Partnership (PVP) Fair for All project, for which CODE was an implementing partner, approached the end of its cycle, we began looking beyond implementation. How could we ensure that the structures we had built would continue to function after the project ended? There was no single answer. One practical step was to strengthen partnerships with organisations that shared our commitment to education and civic participation.

Keeping more than 20 civic clubs across Nigeria active takes sustained effort. We developed a sustainability plan, trained club patrons and established a shared communication channel to make coordination easier. We also strengthened existing partnerships and developed new ones to support our civic champions: young people learning about citizenship, public accountability and good governance.

Humanx, a social venture that produces eco-friendly reusable menstrual pads and provides dignity packs to girls in underserved communities, has been one of our partners for over a year. Through this partnership, we have reached more than 3,000 girls across Nigeria with reusable menstrual pads, underwear, and clips.

Our more recent partnership with the YALI Network Abuja creates another opportunity. Through its Tech a Child Initiative, we aim to connect civic club members with learning opportunities that can strengthen their skills and broaden their prospects.

These partnerships are helping us turn our sustainability plans into practical support for students. Yet the activities we had prepared now depend on something that should be a basic expectation: schools being open and teachers being able to teach.

That is where my frustration lies. On 7 October 2026, the FCT chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress began an indefinite strike over teachers’ promotion arrangements, including the requirement that vacancies must exist before teachers can advance.  One club patron described long-standing promotion delays as a major concern. Behind the administrative language of vacancies and grade levels are teachers whose careers, earnings, and morale are affected.

There have been subsequent developments. Reports on 12 October showed that promotion examinations were taking place despite the strike. That is a development worth acknowledging. However, conducting examinations does not, by itself, establish that the underlying dispute has been resolved or that uninterrupted learning has resumed. Meanwhile, students lose classroom time, and parents must find ways to support children who should be in school.

Nigeria can scarcely afford further barriers to education. UNICEF’s Nigeria Education Fact Sheets 2023 estimated that approximately 8.9 million children of primary school age, 3.9 million of junior secondary school age and 4.9 million of senior secondary school age were out of school. These are dated estimates, but they illustrate the scale of the challenge. 

A child temporarily affected by a strike is not automatically a permanent dropout. Still, prolonged interruptions can make returning to school more difficult, particularly for children already facing poverty, household pressures and other barriers to attendance. We should be working to reduce those risks.

As a development worker, I spend much of my time thinking about practical responses to education challenges. At CODE, we engage communities, build partnerships and support citizens to demand better public services. But our work depends on public institutions fulfilling their responsibilities.

So, what happens when the system responsible for sustaining education becomes a barrier to learning? We can encourage children to stay in school, support their participation, and help them understand their rights. We cannot guarantee consistent learning when unresolved disputes repeatedly interrupt the school calendar.

There is a familiar saying: what is the use of giving a naked person money to buy shoes? The point is about priorities. Programmes that encourage school attendance need functioning classrooms. Civic education needs institutions that demonstrate the responsibility we ask young people to practise.

Teachers and learners are part of the same system. Supporting one while neglecting the other will not produce a functioning education sector. Teachers need fair treatment, clear career progression and conditions that allow them to do their jobs. Learners need safe schools, consistent teaching and a reasonable chance to complete their education.

Listening to these needs must lead to action. Consultations and meetings mean little if the same grievances remain unresolved until another strike begins.

For CODE, the suspension of our planned activities in the affected FCT public schools is a direct reminder of how institutional failures can undermine development work. Time has gone into planning. Partners have committed resources. Students stand to benefit. Yet delivery is on hold because the conditions needed for learning are uncertain.

This is why sustainability cannot be treated only as a requirement in a project proposal. A civic club can have trained patrons, committed partners, and a clear plan, but it still operates within a wider education system. When that system fails, the gains we have worked towards become harder to sustain.

The immediate responsibility is to resolve the dispute through meaningful engagement with teachers and their representatives. The FCT Administration should communicate clearly what has been agreed, who is responsible for implementation, and when outstanding issues will be addressed.

When classes resume, education authorities and schools should also assess missed learning, provide practical support for students to catch up, and identify children who have not returned. Reopening school gates is essential; ensuring that children return and continue learning requires follow-through.

There is a longer-term question of accountability. Why do grievances persist until classrooms are disrupted? What arrangements can prevent the same problems from recurring? Who answers for commitments that are made but not implemented? Children cannot put their futures on hold while institutions work through avoidable delays. A student preparing for examinations cannot recover lost teaching time through promises. A girl already struggling to remain in school needs consistent support now.

We teach our civic champions that leadership means service, responsibility and accountability. They deserve to see those principles reflected in the institutions that govern their lives. We must all remember that education is not a favour government does for its citizens. It is a responsibility. Meeting that responsibility requires more than policies, promises and budgetary allocations. It requires decisions that keep schools functioning, support teachers and protect children’s learning.

Development organisations will continue to play their part. But our interventions cannot substitute for a government that fulfils its obligations. When leadership allows unresolved grievances to keep children out of classrooms, the shame belongs to those entrusted with fixing the system.

Edited by Nankpak Cirfat

By Ogbonna Amarachi Onyeyirichi (PhD)

On October 1, 2026, Nigeria marked 66 years of independence. There were flags, speeches, and the usual round of reflections on how far the country has come. But once the celebrations fade and you sit with the evidence, a harder question remains: how much of what troubled Nigeria at independence is still troubling it today, just wearing a different face?

Nigeria was born in 1960 as a federation stitched together by colonial authorities out of more than 250 ethnic groups, dominated politically by three major blocs: the Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the southwest, and the Igbo in the southeast. Those divisions were written into the independence constitution itself, and the “divide and rule” habits of colonial administration planted seeds of tension between majority and minority groups that are still visible in northern Nigerian politics today. It did not take long for that tension to explode. A disputed census in the early 1960s reignited old rivalries over ethnicity, education, and economic opportunity, and by 1967 the Eastern Region had declared independence as Biafra. The civil war that followed killed somewhere between half a million and three million people. Researchers studying Nigeria’s history of identity conflict point to that war as the first of at least two major waves of violent ethnic conflict the country has lived through, the second beginning in the early 1980s and continuing, in different forms, ever since.

Ethnic division did not stay confined to the battlefield. It shaped how power itself was seized and held. Of the 39 years between the First Republic and the return to civilian rule in 1999, the military governed Nigeria for 33 of them. The cycle began on January 15, 1966, when a group of young army officers overthrew the civilian government, killing Nigeria’s first Prime Minister along with the Sardauna of Sokoto and the premiers of the Northern and Western regions, a targeting pattern that gave the coup its lasting ethnic undertone. A counter coup followed six months later. Decades of military rule reshaped the very structure of the federation, breaking a decentralised system of four large regions into today’s many smaller states, a shift still fueling arguments over restructuring and local government autonomy. Even after democracy returned in 1999, analysts have continued to describe Nigeria’s political system as weighed down by corruption and ethnic tension, with the fragility of federalism still raising real questions about the country’s path to stable governance.

Figure 1. Timeline of recurring crisis points in Nigeria, 1960–2026. Sources: Encyclopædia Britannica (2026); Legit.ng (2025); Council on Foreign Relations (2007, 2019); Olowo (2026); CDD West Africa (2026).

Running underneath all of this is oil. Nigeria’s relationship with its own resource wealth is often summed up bluntly: the country is oil dependent, not oil rich. At independence, Nigeria fed part of West Africa and ran a real manufacturing sector, including a strong textile industry. Today it is a net food importer, and government revenue still rises and falls with the price of crude on a market Nigeria does not control. The human cost of that dependency has been enormous. One widely cited estimate puts corruption and mismanagement losses between 1960 and 1999 alone at roughly 380 billion dollars, with around 90 percent of oil revenue historically flowing to just one percent of the population. Even during boom years, close to half of Nigerians remained below the poverty line. This is the textbook definition of what economists call the resource curse: abundant natural wealth, combined with weak institutions, producing slower growth and deeper corruption instead of shared prosperity.

Corruption in Nigeria has never really behaved like an isolated policy failure. It behaves like a structural feature of governance itself. It is worth remembering that Nigeria’s first military coup in 1966 was justified, in part, as a response to corruption. Sixty years later, corruption remains one of the most consistently named obstacles to the country’s development, and researchers studying resource-rich developing economies have repeatedly found that natural resource wealth is one of the strongest predictors of weak corruption control, alongside poor rule of law, inefficient administration, and reduced government accountability, with Nigeria frequently cited as the clearest example.

Insecurity has followed a similar pattern of changing shape while never really going away. Civil war in the late 1960s gave way to Niger Delta militancy through the 2000s, which gave way to the Boko Haram and ISWAP insurgency that has gripped the northeast since 2009. Recent reporting paints a genuinely alarming picture for 2025 and early 2026: terror attacks rose 43 percent in a single year, with Nigeria recording well over two thousand deaths from banditry and insurgency in just the first half of 2025, more than the entire previous year combined. Between the start of January and mid-February 2026 alone, an estimated 1,258 people were killed nationally, roughly 27 people a day. A nationwide security emergency was reportedly declared in late 2025, and the resulting violence has displaced more than 3.4 million people, turning parts of the country into areas analysts now describe as no-go zones.

And even where the numbers look positive, they rarely translate into better lives. Nigeria’s economy grew nearly 3.9 percent in the first quarter of 2026, yet ordinary households continue to feel squeezed by inflation, a weaker currency, rising food and transport costs, and the lingering effects of the 2023 fuel subsidy removal. It is the same pattern that played out during past oil booms, when growth on paper rarely reached the people who needed it most. Infrastructure tells a parallel story. Nigeria’s national grid collapsed on January 23, 2026, with at least two further major collapses following soon after, compounding a run of failures already recorded through 2025, more than a decade after the power sector was privatised specifically to fix this problem.

None of these patterns exist on their own. They feed each other. Colonial and military era institutions left Nigeria with weak accountability structures. Those weak structures allowed an oil-dependent, rent-driven economy to take hold with little pressure to diversify. That rentier wealth concentrated in the hands of a narrow elite, fueling structural corruption. Corruption and elite capture starved security, power, and economic diversification of the investment they needed. That underinvestment entrenched poverty, inequality, and insecurity. And the resulting instability further eroded public trust in national institutions, feeding the cycle right back to where it started. Ethnic, regional, and religious grievance sits at the center of that cycle the whole way through, amplifying tension at every stage rather than acting as a separate problem off to the side.

Figure 2. The reinforcing cycle of persistent problems in post-independence Nigeria. Sources: Human Rights Watch (2007), as cited in resource-curse literature (2012); Council on Foreign Relations (2019); Olowo (2026); CDD West Africa (2026).

This is exactly the terrain CODE works in every day. Accountability is not an abstract ideal when roughly 90 percent of oil revenue has historically been concentrated in the hands of just one percent of the population, or when a national grid can collapse three times in a matter of months without consequence, or when audited state accounts simply never get published. Through Follow The Money, our community monitors across 36 Nigerian states and 12 African countries exist precisely because the gap between what governments commit to and what citizens actually receive has never fully closed, sixty-six years on. Breaking a reinforcing cycle like this one will not come from fixing any single point in it. It will take sustained pressure at every link at once: on transparency, on institutions, on security, on how resources are actually spent, and on whether ordinary citizens have the tools to see and challenge the gap between promise and delivery.

Sixty-six years after independence, what has changed is mostly the form these problems take, not their substance. Civil war became insurgency and banditry. Military coups became concerns about democratic backsliding. Oil boom mismanagement became debt and subsidy reform strain. The next chapter of Nigeria’s story will be written by whether the country can finally break the cycle, or whether, on the 76th or 86th anniversary, we find ourselves writing some version of this same piece again.

Edited by: Nankpak Cirfat

By Rhona Afiemo, Programs Intern.

Before I started working at Connected Development, I had a picture in my head of what office life was supposed to look like. That picture was heavily influenced by the books I had read, the movies I had watched, and the series I had seen. In my imagination, an office was a serious place where everyone came in, sat at their desks, did their work, attended a few important meetings, and went home. Conversations would mostly be about work, relationships would remain strictly professional, and everyone would probably dress formally.

After watching The Office, Suits, and The Devil Wears Prada, I had different versions of that picture. Suits gave me the polished corporate environment where everyone seemed constantly busy, perfectly dressed, and ready to walk into a high-stakes meeting. The Devil Wears Prada showed an intense workplace where work could appear at any moment, and expectations were extremely high. Then there was The Office, which showed the other extreme: coworkers who knew almost everything about one another, joked around, formed friendships, and sometimes seemed to do everything except work.

When I started at CODE, I realised that real office life sits somewhere between all these versions and is somehow completely different from all of them. One of the first things I noticed was how wrong I was about the idea that an office would be strictly business. I expected to walk in, greet everyone, sit down, and focus on my responsibilities. I thought conversations would mostly sound like “Have you sent the email?” or “What’s the deadline?” Instead, people actually ask questions. How are you doing? Do you understand what you’re working on? Do you need help? What do you think? There is an openness to asking questions that I did not expect, and more importantly, there is space to ask them.

That was probably one of the biggest differences between my imagination and reality. I had expected an environment where I would have to figure things out quietly because everyone would be too busy with their own responsibilities. Instead, I found that people are generally willing to explain, listen, or point you in the right direction. It reminded me of The Office, but without the constant chaos. The people around you are not simply colleagues who happen to occupy the same building. They are people you interact with, learn from, and sometimes depend on.

Another thing I have come to understand is the difference between working collectively and working as a group. Everyone has their own responsibilities, projects, deadlines, and tasks. We are not all doing the same thing at the same time; sometimes everyone is focused on completely different work. Yet there is still a sense of being part of a group. Someone might need assistance with something, and another person will help. Someone might need a ride, and suddenly a colleague is helping them get home. A task may not technically belong to you, but if you can help, you do.

That is something I don’t think movies show very well. In Suits, people are constantly competing, negotiating, and trying to prove that they are the smartest person in the room. In The Devil Wears Prada, the workplace is portrayed as highly demanding and competitive. Real work environments can certainly have competition, but my experience has shown me that collaboration does not always mean everyone doing the same thing. Sometimes collaboration is simply being willing to help. It can be as small as answering a question, reviewing something, sharing information, or helping someone get home.

If there is one thing that The Office prepared me for, it was meetings. But even then, I underestimated how many meetings an actual workplace could have. There are meetings to discuss projects, meetings to plan activities, meetings to give updates, meetings to solve problems, meetings to discuss the meeting that just happened, and somehow there is always another meeting coming. Before joining the office, I imagined that most of the day would be spent quietly working at a desk. I now understand that working also means talking, planning, checking in, reporting, brainstorming, reviewing, and making decisions with other people.

Sometimes the work is the meeting. Other times, the meeting creates more work. And sometimes you are sitting in a meeting, wondering how something that sounded like a five-minute conversation became an hour-long discussion. Still, I have learned that meetings are not necessarily a distraction from work. They are often part of how work gets done, especially when several people have different responsibilities but need to move in the same direction.

I also expected office clothes to be much more formal. In my head, office life meant shirts, trousers, skirts, blazers, formal shoes, and looking like you were prepared to appear in Suits at any moment. Then I got to CODE. People dress according to their own style. There is no expectation that everyone should look like they are attending a corporate board meeting every morning, but there is still an understanding that you are coming to work. It is a balance between comfort, personality, and professionalism, and honestly, I appreciate that. It has made me realise that being professional is not necessarily about wearing a particular type of clothing. You can be comfortable, express yourself, and still understand that you are in a professional environment. So no, my office wardrobe does not look like Suits, and thankfully, I don’t have to dress as I work for Miranda Priestly either.

Another surprise has been the amount of team bonding. When I imagined office life, I thought of people finishing their work and leaving, maybe with an occasional end-of-year party thrown in. Instead, there are moments when people intentionally spend time together outside of simply completing work. There is conversation, laughter, activities, shared experiences, and opportunities to get to know people beyond their job titles. This is probably one of the biggest differences between the office I imagined and the office I have experienced. In movies, relationships between coworkers are often there to move the story forward: someone becomes the protagonist’s best friend, someone becomes the villain, someone becomes the love interest. In real life, relationships are less dramatic but perhaps more valuable. You slowly learn who people are, what they are good at, how they communicate, what makes them laugh, and how they work. There is no dramatic soundtrack playing in the background. It is just people getting to know people.

If The Devil Wears Prada taught me anything, it is that work can appear when you least expect it, and I did not necessarily expect that part to be as true in real life. There is a constant flow of work. You can finish one task and feel like you finally have room to breathe, only for something else to come in: an email, a message, a new request, a meeting, another task, a deadline. Suddenly, your carefully planned day looks completely different. What has surprised me most is that the workload does not always announce itself. Sometimes you can start the day knowing exactly what you want to accomplish, only to discover that the day has other plans. It is one of those things that movies dramatise, but real life does quietly and consistently. The difference is that in a movie, the unexpected task usually leads to an exciting plot; in real life, it usually just leads to a longer day.

If I had to identify the biggest difference between my expectations and my actual experience, it would be the people. I expected an office to be made up of professionals first and people second. Instead, I discovered that the people are what make the professional environment work. They ask questions. They answer questions. They help. They joke. They disagree. They collaborate. They have their own lives and responsibilities outside of work. They have good days and bad days. And sometimes, they will go out of their way to help someone even when it is not technically their responsibility. That has changed the way I think about office life.

Maybe I entered CODE expecting something closer to Suits: serious people, serious conversations, serious clothes, and serious work. What I found was something closer to a combination of The Office, Suits, and The Devil Wears Prada, except with considerably less dramatic music and a lot more teamwork. There is the professionalism of Suits, the humour and human connection of The Office, and the unpredictable workload of The Devil Wears Prada. But there is also something none of them completely captures: the ordinary kindness that exists in a real workplace.

Watching office-based movies and series gave me an idea of what I thought work would look like. They made offices seem either extremely corporate, extremely chaotic, extremely competitive, or all three. My experience at CODE has shown me that real office life is much more nuanced. It can be professional without being overly formal. It can be busy without being impersonal. People can have different responsibilities without becoming isolated from one another. And teamwork does not always mean everyone working on the same thing; sometimes it simply means knowing that there are people around you who are willing to help.

There are many, many meetings. There is an endless flow of work. There are unexpected tasks, deadlines, and responsibilities. But there is also laughter, team bonding, conversations, questions, support, and the occasional colleague willing to help you get home.

So if movies and books created my expectations of office life, CODE has given me the reality. And I have realised that maybe the best workplaces are not the ones that perfectly resemble the offices we see on screen. They are the ones where you can walk in knowing there is work to be done, while also knowing that there are people around you who will help you do it.

By Onyemaizu Fortune, Junior Data Analyst

Say the word COP to most people, and they picture the same scene: world leaders in sharp suits, ministers behind name plates, negotiators in vast halls making grand promises about climate change and climate finance. Cameras flash, statements are read, the world watches for a few days, and then it moves on. What almost nobody sees is everything that happens before anyone walks into that room. That is the part I got a glimpse of at a recent workshop on climate finance and COP negotiations, and it completely rewired how I think about the whole process.

I went in expecting to leave with a slightly better grasp of climate finance and how negotiations tend to play out. Instead, I was left with the uncomfortable realisation that I had been thinking about this all wrong. Negotiating at COP is not a moment. It is the tip of an iceberg built over months of quiet, unglamorous preparation. We picked apart what actually happened at the Bonn Climate Change Conference (SB64), traced the groundwork already underway for COP31, and spent real time on why climate finance keeps showing up as one of the thorniest items on every COP agenda.

Here is the part that stuck with me. You cannot stop a community from flooding, help a farmer adopt climate-smart practices, or get a village onto renewable energy with good intentions alone. Every single one of those efforts needs money and technology behind it. That is the whole reason climate finance keeps hijacking the conversation at COP. It is not a side issue. It is the issue underneath most of the other issues.

The most fun I had all day, and I mean this genuinely, was during the negotiation simulation. Reading about how climate negotiations work is one thing. Sitting down as the representative of a country bloc, trying to hold your ground while reading the room for what everyone else actually needs, is an entirely different sport. Every group at that table wanted what was best for its own bloc, understandably. Getting to an agreement anyway took patience, some strategic listening, and a willingness to give a little to get a little. It was messy. It was also the moment the whole workshop clicked for me.

Then the conversation turned to Nigeria, and the numbers landed differently once they were about home. Implementing Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC 3.0) between 2026 and 2035 is projected to cost $ 337 billion. Eighty percent of that is expected to come from climate finance raised abroad. Sit with that for a second. It means the outcome of negotiations happening in rooms Nigeria may or may not have real influence in will directly decide how much progress the country can make on climate-resilient agriculture, water security, healthcare, and more.

Suddenly, showing up prepared to those negotiations stops being a diplomatic nicety and becomes something closer to a national necessity. And the backdrop makes it even more urgent. Public climate finance is shrinking. Loans are replacing grants at a worrying pace. The gap between what climate-vulnerable countries need and what is actually on offer keeps widening. None of that is a reason for developing countries to walk into negotiations underprepared. If anything, it is the exact opposite.

This is not a new story for CODE. Our own research has been tracking this gap for years. In our State of Climate Finance in Nigeria report, produced with Oxfam Nigeria and INKA Consult, we found that Nigeria received just 4.9 billion dollars for climate-related projects between 2015 and 2021, a fraction of what the country actually needs. Our 2025 Annual Report pushed that picture into sharper focus, putting Nigeria’s annual climate finance gap at 177.7 billion dollars and showing that three-quarters of the finance the country did receive came as loans rather than grants. Sitting in that workshop, watching those same dynamics play out in a simulation, made the research feel less like a set of statistics and more like a warning we had already written ourselves.

Here is where it got personal for the work we do at CODE. Negotiations set the ceiling on what states commit to. Accountability decides whether any of that commitment ever reaches the people who actually need it. The communities dealing with floods, the households facing food insecurity, the people whose lives are shaped by decisions made in rooms they will never enter, they have no seat at that table. Yet they carry the weight of whatever gets decided there. That gap is exactly where civil society organisations step in, working to hold the line between what governments promise on a global stage and what actually shows up on the ground, through transparency, tracking of climate financing, real citizen involvement, and keeping an eye on how resources are spent. It is the same principle behind our Follow The Money work, where community monitors track public funds in real time, and behind projects like our Interfaith Dialogue on Climate Change, which brings faith communities into local climate action rather than leaving the conversation entirely to negotiators in distant conference halls.

So preparing negotiators and building strong accountability systems are not two separate jobs. They are two halves of the same job, and if there is one thing I am walking away with, it is this. The real work does not start at the negotiating table. It starts long before, in understanding what is actually at stake, learning to speak the language negotiations run on, building coalitions that can hold under pressure, and quietly training the negotiators who will represent us next.

With COP31 on the horizon, investing in people might be one of the smartest bets we make on climate right now. Negotiating skills alone will not fix the climate crisis. But it just might be what stands between Nigeria getting the partnerships and outcomes it needs and watching global promises stay exactly that: promises. Because in the end, nobody is going to remember how polished the conference halls looked. What will actually count is whether the people back home, in the flood zones and the drought-hit farms, ever felt the difference.

 Mining, health, and the children Northern Nigeria is leaving behind

By Hyeladzira James Mshelia  | Ag. CEO, Connected Development [CODE]

There is something particularly cruel about a crisis that starts underground and ends in a classroom or, more accurately, in the absence of one. In the mineral-rich states across northern Nigeria, from Zamfara to Bauchi, Plateau to Nasarawa, the extractive economy is doing what decades of underfunding and bad policy never quite managed to finish: it is pulling children out of school for good. This is not a far-off or theoretical problem. It is happening in backyards, in family compounds, in communities where the soil holds both a family’s last hope and a child’s undoing.

In Bauchi State’s mining communities, children as young as ten abandon classrooms for mining sites, toiling alongside adults extracting sand and breaking rocks under the scorching sun, hoping to scrape together enough for their families to survive. Bauchi had approximately 1.37 million out-of-school children in 2022, a staggering figure made worse by the fact that mining communities concentrate the worst of these numbers.

A family member of mine working in Jos, Plateau State, in the mining industry describes what he sees regularly across the Middle Belt. “It’s not so much a forced situation,” he said to me. “More of a family business, the kids helping their parents.” But support, in this case, is something sobering: children small enough to go down tight mine shafts that adults cannot enter.

Many of these families were farmers not long ago. However, banditry drove them off their land with nowhere to return to; the mine became the farm, and the children came with them. In Nasarawa State, for instance, a community of over five thousand people had just fifty children attending school on a regular school day,  such a shame!

The gendered aspects of this pattern merit particular attention, because when mothers join the mining workforce, girls are often withdrawn from school to perform domestic duties. And in some communities, adolescent girls are more vulnerable to exploitation and early marriage. On the other hand, boys are often directly recruited into artisanal mining as cheap labour. Both are a different kind of dispossession and both are almost completely invisible to policy.

The physical toll of mining on children is not separate from the education crisis, infact it is inseparable from it. Environmental degradation from mining activities leads to respiratory illnesses and waterborne diseases that directly affect school attendance and learning outcomes. A child coughing through the night does not sit upright in a classroom the next morning, more so, a child with stunted neurological development cannot be expected to sit an examination.

On government intervention, my source in Jos is blunt: “The law is one thing. Enforcement is another.” Existing frameworks for regulating artisanal mining exist on paper, but in remote communities where mining happens sporadically and out of sight, effective government presence remains to be seen.

Nowhere is this truth more devastatingly illustrated than in Zamfara State, where the world witnessed what has since been described as the worst outbreak of lead poisoning in recorded history. In 2010, hundreds of children in and around Bagega village in northern Nigeria began to fall seriously ill. They suffered seizures, blindness, and in many cases, never recovered. A Médecins Sans Frontières investigation later traced the cause to informal gold mining activities where gold-bearing ore was mixed with lead. The low-tech extraction methods released toxic lead dust into the air, which miners unknowingly carried into their homes on clothing and skin, exposing entire families.

Testing of children under five in the affected communities showed that over 90% had blood lead levels far above emergency intervention thresholds. More than 400 children are estimated to have died as a result of the outbreak. Lead poisoning in early childhood causes irreversible harm. It damages the brain and nervous system, disrupting cognitive development, learning ability, and long-term health. Many of the children who survived were left with lifelong impairments that affected how they learn, grow, and function.

The Bagega crisis revealed what happens when environmental damage, weak regulation, and poverty collide: children bear the greatest burden, not just in lives lost, but in futures permanently altered.

It also became a turning point for Connected Development. By early 2013, national attention had begun to shift elsewhere, but promised remediation funds were still not reaching Bagega, despite federal approval. In response, CODE started the #SaveBagega campaign, leveraging open data, social media, and civic engagement to refocus national attention on the crisis. The campaign brought forward community evidence, elevated the voices of affected families, and helped re-ignite urgency around government commitments and the release of the $5.3 million needed for remediation. It reached more than a million people and contributed to government action, including the release of funds for environmental cleanup and basic social infrastructure in affected communities.

CODE continued to follow up through field monitoring to ensure the work was actually done. Cleanup had been completed by mid-2014, and more than 1,000 children had been screened and entered into treatment programs. This experience inspired the establishment of Follow The Money, a citizen-led accountability movement tracking public funds and service delivery across Africa. It’s a simple, but powerful lesson at the core of the report: when accountability breaks down, people pay the price, and it’s always better to prevent than to respond.

What Does This Demand of Us?

Bagega was no isolated event. Children as young as six years old are still being reported to work in hazardous mining conditions across states including Nasarawa, Kebbi and Plateau. The crisis is ongoing, diffuse and chronically underfunded, partly because mining communities are at the confluence of every crisis Nigeria has failed to fix: insecurity, unemployment, poor infrastructure for education and absent social protection.

If mining revenues were equitably distributed in infrastructure, in education funding and in local development then many families would not have to rely on child labour in the mines. But accountability is the bedrock of fair distribution, and it requires the kind of community-led tracking that Follow The Money was designed to provide.

What #SaveBagega proved is that data used with courage and community can move a government that might otherwise turn a blind eye. The question today is whether we are ready to bring that same energy not only to clean-up but to prevention: to the school infrastructure, social protection, and governance frameworks that mean the next Bagega never happens at all.

Hyeladzira James Mshelia

Ag. Chief Executive, Connected Development [CODE]

Connected Development (CODE) runs Follow The Money, Nigeria’s leading citizen-led accountability initiative, tracking government spending in underserved communities across Africa.

by Chinedu Emmanuel Oda

A dispatch from the African Social Impact Summit 2026

I want to be honest about something: when I landed in Lagos for the African Social Impact Summit (ASIS) 2026, I was not expecting to be unsettled. I have sat through my share of post-development conferences, and they usually confirm what I already know, just with better slide decks. ASIS 2026 was different. The numbers on the screen described the exact world I work in every day, and the picture they painted was uncomfortable.

Here is the dive. Global Overseas Development Assistance, the grant funding that has sustained civil society work across Africa for decades, has contracted by 23.1% over the preceding cycle. At the same time, the annual gap to fund the Sustainable Development Goals in Africa alone stands at $2.5 trillion. Yet over $300 trillion sits in private capital markets, largely untouched by development finance. The problem is not that the money doesn’t exist. It’s that no one has yet built the bridge between that capital and the communities that need it most.

CODE has been building that bridge for over fourteen years. We just haven’t been calling it that. For most of CODE’s history, our funding has operated on what the Summit called “activity financing.” A donor asks us to run community monitoring workshops; we run them, count attendance, submit reports, and the grant closes. That model is ending, not because our work is poor, but because the institutions controlling development capital are now asking a fundamentally different question. Not “what did you do?” but “what actually changed, can you prove it, and can you improve it?”

Under the emerging impact-financing model, donors and private investors only release payment after an Independent Verification Agent (IVA) confirms that promised outcomes actually occurred on the ground. No verified outcome, no payment. The IVA is not a supporting role in this structure; it is the mechanism the entire system depends on.

Here is what struck me sitting in that conference hall: CODE has been doing IVA work for years. We have simply never packaged it as such. Take our Girls’ Education Project in Bauchi, one of Nigeria’s most educationally disadvantaged states, where over a million girls are out of school. We don’t just run girls’ mentorship programmes. We track education budgets through the State Education Accounts model, monitor school infrastructure through community champions across four LGAs, and independently verify whether money allocated for classrooms actually produced classrooms. That is outcome verification. That is IVA work.

Consider also our role on AGILE (Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment), which operates across multiple states. We serve as Third-Party Monitor: our dedicated monitors, including civil engineers, independently assess the construction quality of school buildings, audit Conditional Cash Transfers, and verify that life-skills delivery happened as promised. Again, IVA work, simply not labelled as such.

Then there is Follow The Money. Since 2012, our iFTM platform has tracked more than $500 million in public funds across all 36 Nigerian states, and 12 African countries, with over 9,000 active community monitors documenting what they find in real time. In Kaduna alone, FTM monitoring directly contributed to the delivery of $1.5 million in education infrastructure that had been budgeted but never built. Follow The Money is an IVA methodology. We have simply never priced it as one.

One session that didn’t get enough attention outside the room was the presentation on the Public Sector Performance Index (PSPI) and its state governance rankings. The core argument was pointed: governance performance is not about what a state has, but about how well it uses what it has. A state with a modest budget that deploys it transparently outranks a resource-rich state that does not.

PSPI ranks Nigeria’s 36 states and the FCT across five criteria: citizen satisfaction, revenue self-reliance, debt sustainability, revenue mobilisation, and transparency. One finding landed hardest in the room: as of the 2026 report, only 14 of Nigeria’s 36 states had publicly released their 2025 audited accounts. Among the non-compliant states is the FCT, the seat of the Federal Government, alongside Rivers State, one of the country’s wealthiest. If those two cannot meet this basic standard, the picture elsewhere is considerably worse.

For our Follow The Money work, this matters immediately. PSPI’s rankings tell us which states have the widest gap between resources and delivery, while FTM tells us what is actually happening on the ground in those same communities. Together, the two close an accountability loop that neither can close alone.

On my flight back, I kept thinking about the girls in Bauchi whose school roof we helped get fixed because a community monitor noticed the contractor hadn’t returned after the first payment. That is not an abstract development outcome. Those are children who now go to school when it rains.

The question ASIS 2026 forced me to confront is this: five years from now, will the financial structures that fund this kind of work still exist in the form we know? Or will we have been bold enough to build the ones that replace them?

CODE has the networks, the credibility, and the methodology. What the shift to impact financing asks of us now is the courage to name what we already do, and charge for it.