Muazu Alhaji Modu

North East in 2018 ranked highest number of out of school children in Nigeria. This is mainly caused by the devastation of the region by Boko Haram insurgency, impeding academic activities and causing the increase of the number of children that are not in school.

Another contributing factor to the accelerating number of out of school children is the deficiencies in the basic education sector— lack of  basic infrastructures, inadequate teaching material and poor qualification of teachers—are making education in the NorthEast a challenge that needs urgent intervention.

In 2016, the Nigerian Government budgeted NGN 20million, for the construction and furnishing of 2 blocks of 3 Classrooms at Tongo II Primary School in Tongo village, Gombe State under the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC).

Follow The Money, known for its mission to track government spending and ensure transparency and accountability in the implementation of government or international aid projects in grassroots communities, began a campaign, #FurnishTongo, to track and oversee the completing of the Education project in Tongo II Primary School.

Follow The Money is working to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 4 –improving access to quality basic education and ensuring effective service delivery at grassroots. As the Follow The Money Chapter Lead in Gombo State, I led a team on a preliminary visit to Tongo community. There, we learned that the school had only 4 classrooms  while 2 of these  classrooms were dilapidated but still, they served as learning rooms to over 700 registered Pupils (414 Boys and 286 Girls).

Follow The Money sensitized the people of Tongo and intensively engaged local leaders, women groups, youth groups, religious heads—in the tracking  process so they could ask their elected representatives the right questions and monitor the contractors assigned the project till it is completed. One of the challenges we experienced was harrassment from political persons acusing us of working with opponents to incite rural dwellers against the government. Our lives were threatened and we were told if we did not end our campaigns, we would be locked in cells. We, however, presented documents (page of the budget where project started, tender advertisement, FOI request letters to various MDAs, reports of community outreaches etc.) to them showing FTM’s independence of any group. We told them Follow The Money is a legitimate transparency and accountability movement

We intensified our advocacy on both traditional and social media. Few days later the construction commenced and was completed  within a very short period of time. After the implementation, the ratio of students per classroom drastically reduced at the school and more children were enrolled at Tongo II Primary School. Our advocacy brought about the building of 6 additional classrooms and also created opportunity for hundreds of children to access basic education.

As a child, I loved playing the “Profession” game. From around the neighbourhood, kids will huddle together in a circle, and randomly pick a profession they dream of becoming, with rhythmic clapping and dancing. The trick was that the person who mentioned a profession already mentioned is knocked out of the circle until there are two or three kids still in the circle. It was a thing of pride to be one of the “last-kids-standing”. To always be a part of the winning kids, I felt sticking to a profession that was unique and not easily remembered, was the trick.

This began my journey to becoming an accountant. Thus, even though I was meant to be in Science class back in secondary school, I opted for the social sciences, because “accountant” stuck on my mind, and my love for figures and numbers wouldn’t go away. I knew accounting was what I wanted and there was no going back. Through hard work and passion, I won best in class in secondary school and this drove me to major in Accounting. With scientific evidence of working hard already playing out in my life, I further made a decision of not just being a pragmatic accounting graduate but a pragmatic chartered accountant.

The ICAN journey was not easy. It involved closing from work and going for evening classes, hence, I barely had a life outside preparations for the exams because I was struggling with office deliverables and reading for my exams. I knew the fulfilment and benefits I will get from being a Chartered accountant- including, improved capacity to effectively manage an entity or country from the financial perspective. However, it required herculean financial and time resources, of which I had constraints.

At last, on May 9, 2018, I overcame all the hurdles and was inducted as an Associate Chartered Accountant (ACA) with  The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN). Apart from hard work, I was blessed with amazing tutors, a supporting family, friends and Connected Development (CODE). Working with the CODE team so far, has enabled me to hone my accounting skills. CODE has given me the opportunity to meet with professional mentors who have also motivated me to strive to be the best in my profession. I have also had the opportunity to train staff in order to improve their expense reconciliation skills and ensure they have basic financial management knowledge. Also, my interaction with other departments such as the Programmes and Community Engagement units has availed me the opportunity to learn programme roles and responsibilities in order to effectively carry out my duties in financial project management, such as project budgeting and financial reporting.

Follow The Money which is an initiative of CODE; tracks, advocates and visualises government spending in rural communities. Through this, we ensure rural dwellers have access to education, health, water, sanitation and hygiene facilities. Basically, we make sure the government is accountable to its citizens. As the accountant and internal control specialist, I follow the “follow-the-money” team to ensure our organisation is accountable to rural communities – the bane of our existence, and our donors all around the world.  Hence, I am the Chief Follow The Money Specialist.

Accounting has allowed me to grow and learn both professionally and personally. Although it is a competitive field, it offers fantastic opportunities for career progression in different organizations, industries and countries. Accounting is not only the commercial language of an organization it is also at the centre of ever-changing business dynamics and management practices.

However, we don’t have to be “official” or possess “full technical capacity” to hold our governments accountable. It is important for us to track government spending within our communities in order to ensure sustainable development for all. A great way to start is to join ifollowthemoney.org. Have you done that? Sign up today!

In recent times, the Federal Government of Nigeria has been struggling to contain her 8.6 million out-of-school children (high figure in the world) through various interventions. One of such interventions is the National Home Grown School Feeding Program (NHGSFP) which seeks to provide at least one very good meal per day, to the pupils. Cheerlessly, due to obvious reasons, insecurity, in the country, experts contend that the figure at 8.6 million is highly conservative.

CODE visits Out-of-school children in Maiduguri, Borno State

For example, in Benue State, North-Central Nigeria, irked by the worsening humanitarian crisis occasioned by incessant farmers-herdsmen clashes, Governor Samuel Ortom announced that 70 per cent out of the over 170,000 internally displaced persons in Benue are children. He didn’t stop there. He alarmed that these children no longer have access to functional education. In a related development in Nasarawa State (yet in the North-Central geopolitical zone), it is recently reported that 20,000 pupils have been forced to abandon school over herdsmen crisis.

I purposely de-selected examples from the other five (5) geopolitical zones especially Northeast Nigeria where Boko Haram is proving stubborn against the armed forces, to highlight that our educational deficiency is widespread and endemic. Northeast has suffered a major setback in education and other dimensions of development on the account of Boko Haram which mounted a brazen campaign against Western education and later transformed to a terrorist network. Notwithstanding, every state have their own share of the problem. This has summed up to a measure of full-scale educational crisis at the national level.

The essence of Day of the African Child (commemorated on June 16, every year) is to honour hundreds of school children who were brutally mowed down by the Republic of South Africa. In 1976, school children had risen against a dysfunctional educational system in their country; demanding reforms and increased funding. What followed was a joint misbehaviour from the government and security agencies. Instead of heeding to calls for reforms which were dire (as we have in Nigeria today), the government resorted to violence – killing hundreds of school children who were “merely” exercising their fundamental human rights by calling on their government to reform for global competitiveness.

Consequently, on 16th June 1991, the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now African Union (AU) declared June 16 as Day of the African Child. It became a day for Member States to reconsider national educational policies and more comprehensively, commitments to the attainment of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The theme for 2018 is: Leave No Child Behind in Africa’s Development. As a continent, how have we fared on matters of child protection; basic education; universal health coverage; etc. Africa must move beyond the fanfare of June 16 and pursue social and economic development with every vigour and rigour. Africa is not lame!

Nigeria cannot conveniently shy away from the problem. Without minding that Nigeria’s population explosion has put pressure on the country’s resources; public services and infrastructure, I maintain “there is no way to run”. A possible consequence of our dysfunctional education is best captured when the President of the Senate – Senator (Dr.) Abubakar Bukola Saraki warned that the situation is not only alarming but also a ticking time bomb. How else can I describe this dangerous situation to sound more convincing?

The above security perspective by Senator Saraki cannot be digested in isolation. What about the ability to secure jobs or employment that can guarantee sustainable livelihoods. In the science of genetics, organisms reproduce after their kind. The same is true of poverty. One big reap in education is the opportunity to acquire suitable skills for contemporary jobs. Google recently established an artificial intelligence (AI) centre in Ghana. As organisms, we either evolve and adapt to survive or we perish. This is a long standing scientific fact. There are even more convincing instances on why Nigeria must invest in her people – human capital development. National and international economic environment is quite dynamic or rapidly changing. Should the “giant of Africa” be left behind?

CODE and other CSOs in Press Conference, calling for #AmendUBEAct in Abuja.

In its traditional innovative solutions; synergy with Nigerian CSOs and in partnership with Malala Fund, Connected Development is currently leading a campaign on the urgency to amend the country’s Universal Basic Education (UBE) Act of 2004 to accommodate contemporary discrepancies and realities. For emphasis (at the risk of sounding trite), one “miraculous” way that the Federal Government of Nigeria can respond to the frightful of out-of-school figure is to amend the current UBE Act (please, track previous national conversations on twitter using #AmendUBEAct).

As I excuse my keypad for other itineraries of the day, let me conclude with a few sentences. As far as governments (at all levels) continue to keep mum over our 8.6 million out-of-school children, excruciating poverty is inevitable. Whereas it is no longer fashionable to abandon the business of governance to governments alone; citizens must support government officials in all possible ways for I consider bad leadership and poverty as our “common enemy”. By the way, my heart goes out to hundred of children in the Republic of South Africa that were murdered, gruesomely, on this day 1976. For this is the 28th edition of the #DayOfTheAfricanChild which you paid the supreme price, making it to be.

Written by Ani, Nwachukwu Agwu. Ani is a rural development practitioner. He can be reached via Nwachukwu@connecteddevelopment.org . He works with Follow The Money – the fastest growing social accountability movement in Africa.

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

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

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

While making a presentation at the workshop

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

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

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

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

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

As organization grow, we seems to get some things out of place unintentionally; one of which is an email. As someone who send email a lot, I realised, sometimes when I want to send an email broadcast to the whole team – I was usually leaving out some team members unintentionally.

And this has caused me a lot of concern as teammates who are supposed to get an email does not receive one which might eventually lead to unintended consequences.

Thinking of how to mitigate such happenings, I started thinking of how to create an email list serve that will be for some team according to their group names.

One of such team is the Management Team, CODERs (which is a list of all staffs of CODE asides Community Champions and Community Park employee), Chapter Lead and others.

To create the Management Team email Listserve, I followed the following steps;

1. Look at the top left corner of the organization email, there is Mail text with a down arrow. Click on it
2. Pick the Contacts menu and it will automatically show you your contact list.
3. By the left menu, find “New Group” and click on it to create a new group
4. Since I am creating a management email listserve, I will name my group “Management”, you can name yours according to the team name or group name.
5. Click on “OK” once you are done and find your newly created group by the left menu options, mine is “Management”
6. Click on your newly created group (mine is Management)and it will show you that there is no contacts in the group.
7. Click on the icon with a + button under the search bar and enter all the contacts you want to add and click on add once you are done.
8. Once you are done, look at the top left corner and navigate back to email menu

With this step, we just created a “management” email listserve and to use the newly created group whenever you want to send a group email to the group, all you have to do is to write “management” on the To menu and you can automatically select the group.

With this, I know the next time I want to send an email to the management email, all I have to do is go to compose email button and enter the group name to select it.

Now I can send email to my groups without having to enter all emails one after the other – I just become a email Ninja.

Although there are some other ways to do this, but by far – this is the most simplest of all the options available.

How has this help to save your time? Do not hesitate to let me know.

Not long ago, my friend and co-founder at Connected Development (CODE), Oludotun Babayemi, exited from the Executive Management of CODE and moved to a non-executive role as member of the Board of Trustees. This means that he will no longer have day to day responsibilities or routine involvement in CODE activities, though he will continue to consult, advise and support me and the management team.

I am delighted to say that Dotun’s exit in a very remarkable way symbolizes the core spirit and value of the CODE brand and Follow The Money movement. The essence of CODE is not only captured in its written goals, mission and vision, but in an unwritten belief in the evolution of personal development.

For those readers who are not conversant with CODE, it is useful to state who we are. Founded in 2012, CODE is a non-government organization (NGO) whose mission is to empower marginalized communities in Africa. We strengthen local communities by creating platforms for dialogue, enabling informed debate, and building capacities of citizens on how to hold their government accountable through “Follow The Money”, our governance accountability and transparency initiative.

CODE provides marginalized and vulnerable communities with resources to amplify their voices with independence and integrity while providing these grassroots populations with information that engenders social and economic progress. To enhance effective democratic governance and accountability, we create platforms (mobile and web technologies) that close the feedback loop between citizens and the government. Thus, with global expertise and reach, we focus on community outreach, influencing policies, practices, and knowledge mobilization.

Our commitment to participatory capacity and community building and monitoring and evaluation creates effective and sustainable programs even within the most challenging environments.

Nevertheless, against this backdrop, we have as our fundamental drive, the hunger to evolve into a global brand that provides a platform for participatory governance, and youth development. We want to see a future where today’s CODE leadership shall be replaced tomorrow by a new cadre of civil society leaders who grew up within our ranks, and evolved into strong thought-leaders while we, the old guard, move on to higher national and global duties.

We want to see Next-Generation leaders who are well-equipped for tomorrow, trained from the emerging societal challenges of today.

This is why we recognize the importance of mentoring. I believe that for there to be a seamless transition into the next generation there needs to be a conscious mentorship agenda on the part of thoughtful leaders of today as well as a willingness on the part of today’s followers to enter what I call a “leadership conveyor belt” in order to be transported through the assembly line of Future Leader manufacture.

For instance, before Dotun left the Executive Team, he consciously planned an exit strategy which sought to “recruit and rejig” a replacement team in the CODE programme value chain.

When we started recruiting A – Team staff last year, he planned to have each new member take the pieces of his role in scaling the organization, and he provided support for their various tasks while he made his transition to work with the Board. It was when he saw the success of his transition strategy that he felt convinced that the coast was clear to make the launch up the next rung in the ladder.

For me, it was a fulfillment of the CODE dream – establishing a template for leadership evolution.

It is a situation I can relate to, having experienced a similar transition in my task in my other life at the African Youth Initiative on Climate Change (AYICC), when I moved from an Executive role as the Communications Director to a non-executive advisory role as member of the Board. Likewise, some day in the future, I will bow out as the Chief Executive of CODE to a non-executive role.

Just like Dotun is doing today, I will have the privilege of being able to step back and watch CODE develop and grow while I explore other opportunities to add value to the society and impact my world.

I believe robust and sustainable transition is the only way we can emphasize and stay committed to the ongoing success of CODE in particular, and of the wider transparency and accountability community in general. We must remain passionate about open-data, technology and citizen participation, as this is the only real doorway into the journey to deepen democracy by empowering more communities with enough knowledge to be able to hold their government accountable.

And this brings me to a very vital point. It took a long time of personal thought and research to come to the conclusion that the future of Nigeria and indeed Africa depends on active participation of civil society in the political process. A democratic state cannot be stable unless it is effective and legitimate, with the respect and support of its citizens.

Civil society is a check, a monitor, but also a vital partner in the quest for this kind of positive relationship between the democratic state and its citizens. Therefore, the best model would be when the civil society, empowered with their developmental experience and capacity, finds itself playing active role in politics.

There are reasons for this conclusion. First of all, the most basic role of civil society is to limit and control the power of the state.  For instance, as is the situation in Nigeria, when a country is emerging from decades of military rule, it needs to find ways to check, monitor, and restrain the power of political leaders and state officials.

Civil society actors serve as a watchdog, and raise public concern about any abuse of power.  They campaign for access to information, including freedom of information laws, and rules and institutions to control corruption. They promote political participation by educating people about their rights and obligations as democratic citizens, and encouraging them to critically examine electoral manifestoes and vote in elections.  They help develop citizens’ skills to work with one another to solve common problems, to debate public issues, and express their views. They play an important role in mediating and helping to resolve conflicts – by adopting bargaining, accommodation and compromise. These are all functions that guarantee a functional, sustainable state.

Secondly, civil society organizations help to develop the other values of democratic life:  tolerance, moderation, compromise, and respect for opposing points of view. And, without this deeper culture of accommodation, democracy cannot be stable. These values cannot simply be taught; they must also be experienced through practice.

So, I see a future where civil society actors-turned politicians shall help to develop programs for democratic civic education in the schools; revise the curricula, rewrite the textbooks, and retrain teachers in order to educate young people about the mistakes of the past and teach them the principles and values of democracy.

Furthermore, because they have ingrained capacity as a result of their experience, these future leaders shall strengthen democracy by providing new forms of interest and solidarity that cut across old forms of tribal, linguistic, religious, and other identity ties.  Democracy cannot be stable if people only associate with others of the same religion or identity.  They will also play the vital role of engineering electoral best practices by ensuring that the voting and vote counting is entirely free, fair, peaceful, and transparent.

Thirdly, political recruitment of today is flawed.  We need a new model to identify and train new types of leaders who have dealt with important public issues and can be recruited to run for political office at all levels and to serve in state and national legislature. To achieve this, civil society mentorship processes of today could become political recruitment platforms of tomorrow.

National Orientation Agency is a Nigerian government agency created in 2005 and tasked with communicating government policy, staying abreast of public opinion and promoting patriotism, national unity, and development of Nigerian society.

Do Nigerians have faith in NOA to build a communication bridge for citizens to interact with the government? Is citizens’ inclusion and engagement in demanding transparency and accountability encouraged? Or should we go ahead and advocate for ourselves liaising with civil societies in ensuring that our voices are heard and sideline this agency and all it stands for because of constant interferences of political bureaucracies in decision making and activities of NOA.

Am a little bit indecisive on what to think about NOA, but not entirely conclusive because of recent development by this agency to partner with civil society organisations in Nigeria. NOA gave an open call for collaboration with CSOs on the 31st of October 2017 at Ibeto Hotel, Abuja where a good number of representatives from different NGOs were in attendance.

The Director-General @GarbaAbari represented by The Director, Planning, research and strategy Dr Bonat J. Tagwai gave a brief review of NOAs five years strategy plans and their ongoing projects was made available to all participants, and full involvement of CSOs in the implementation of this program welcomed.

Some highlight of their activities includes

• A well-structured agency and adequately staffed across the country comprising of National Headquarters, 36 States Directorate, FCT 774 Local Government Offices and  3000 volunteer Corp.
• NOA has visited about 120 LGA and  communities to update them on their activities
• They have interpreted the Freedom of Information Act into 20 languages to ease understanding of the Act and drive citizen mobilization and participation in demanding accountability and transparency from their government.
• Has started a survey of 130 MDAs to engage public institutions
• And have launched NOA FM Radio 97.7 though still test running and ideas will be welcomed on how to utilize this station efficiently.

Civil Societies present participated in group work to explore opportunities for partnerships with Short presentations of each group to highlight areas of collaborations with NOA.

A Cross-Section Of CSOs During The Group work

A Cross-Section Of CSOs During The Group work

The benefit for CSOs to collaborate with NOA was further stressed that based on their staff’s strengths and 3000 volunteers scattered around the country. Ease of carrying out campaigns using this volunteer will be efficient because instead of looking for new hands or travelling to places you don’t know, NOA could provide:

The contacts of their volunteers who are always on the ground in all the state.

Location and addresses of their state offices to assist in working in new terrains.

These, in particular, will assist connected development in further driving their campaigns and growing networks.

A Cross-Section Of CSOs During The Group work

To encourage full involvement and authentic evidence of collaborations, interested Civil Societies should send official letters to the Director-General making reference of this event.

This event was viewed and broadcast on PTV News. 

Hon. Emmanuel Njoku and DG Political, Civic, Ethics and Values Dept. Mrs Ngozi Ekeoba

Connected development as started utilizing this partnership opportunity with NOA as our Program Manager for democracy and governance Hon. Emmanuel Njoku plans on working with NOA in his campaign Engaging Emerging Voters for young people below 18 years in senior secondary two and three respectively.

A little brief of the objective of the campaign by Emmanuel Njoku is to increase voter education among eligible secondary school student. The project hopes to create clubs in secondary school for sustainability across the country and provision of short training on democratic values for members

We anticipate NOA full support in achieving this campaign and ensuring that the younger generation will understand the requirement of leadership and the importance of voting to reach a better outcome in the 2019 elections.

I am not very certain that, Clive Humby, when he boldly declared in 2006 that “Data is the new oil” fully grasped the extent to which this statement will become true a decade down the line. Let us take a look at some of the parallels between oil and data:

•       Both are raw forms of abundantly available resources
•       Both can be drilled, extracted, refined, stored, transported and commodified
•       Both have to be refined to be valuable; in fact, the more refined, the more the value
•       Both have immense controlling power on the economy

In fact, a lot of people have come to the conclusion that data is to the 21st century what oil was to the 18th century. Consider the fact that recently, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft have been listed as the five most lucrative companies in the world. We know that what makes them so lucrative are the services they provide. True – but the main question is: “what services and to whom are these services rendered and at what cost?”. Let me try to help with that – these companies by providing various platforms for people to purchase goods without actually visiting a store, meet people without actually leaving the comfort of our homes, cloud storage that does not require bulky hardware etc. collect, on a daily basis, basic data about where people live, how they think, what they like, what they do etc. So basically, they provide access and collect tons of data from us in return. Then, if you consider that this is data that most governments do not even have and people largely give these out without much prodding, then, it should really give you something to think about. If I am willing to provide strangers with so much data/information about myself, why then should I not become data literate? Why should I not be interested in knowing/learning how these data can be used, by whom and for what purposes and how it can affect me? On a much more general level, why should I not be interested in data that can have a direct impact on my life, whether positive or negative?

Despite having worked at Connected Development for some time, during some conversations, I used to still get stuck at some point, trying to explain how CODE is connected to the data literacy movement. All that has been demystified for me after attending the one week School of Data summer camp (an annual event for individuals and members of the SCODA network to come together and share insights on their current work and open up channels for collaboration) in Tanzania from 23rd to 30th September 2017.

members of the SCODA network at the summer camp

Now, I understand that the most part of the work we do is connected to data literacy; when we teach people in rural communities what financial data is important, how they can access such data, refine it, use it, shape it into newsworthy stories and in the long run, use their interaction with the entire system and processes to ensure their communities are the better for it. Afterall, if people are willing to give total strangers personal data about themselves on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and all other social networks, that can be used to put together information about them, why should they not be interested in knowing how much of their commonwealth their governments have decided to spend on healthcare, education, and provision of other social infrastructure and amenities such as potable water, understand how these funds are being spent and follow the money trail. This is what we call Follow The Money and this is why it is important that every citizen, regardless of where they live needs to follow the money.

non-members explain Follow The Money in their own words using the water cycle!

In addition, it was also an opportunity to share what we do at CODE, especially with respect to Follow The Money and how other organizations, individuals, and countries can benefit from this model.

Needless to say that from this, we have people in Haiti, Tanzania, Malawi who are interested in following the money in their countries.

Explaining why and how Follow The Money is a data literacy initiative

Data is abundant around us, data is no longer texts and numbers – data is words, videos, audio, facts, figures. Data is anything that can be used to provide insight on a matter or person or place or situation and since we live in the age of information where these insights can easily be transferred or sold and Data is the currency through which these transactions occur, it is safe then to agree that Data is indeed the new oil. if this is the case, it is time everyone learned how to access, refine and use these data. More important however is the fact that the more people become data literate and use available data, the more evidence there will be for advocating for more data to be open and for data to be more open!

If you are interested in joining a growing community of data enthusiasts who are learning how to use financial data to improve their communities and fight corruption, join us at

iFOLLOWTHEMONEY PLATFORM today!

Today is exactly nine months since we have been experimenting the iFollowTheMoney community and this is a perfect time to write about this community;  what led the Follow the Money Team to the community, why the need for it and what exactly is the future we see to have invested in such a platform.

What is a Community?

Merriam Webster defined community as an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (such as species) in a common location.

With the definition, there are some key elements of a community which are “interacting population” and “in a common place”.

As such, we cannot have an interacting population without a common place.

While reading Babajide Durosaye post on medium about community, I cannot but agree with his definition of a community which he defines as “Communities are networks with shared ideals or demographics, people concentrate on building valuable relationships rather than using each other”.

At Follow the Money, we have community champions in various states and communities in the country and outside of it, we cannot afford to have the kind of community which Babajide defined. Hence, there is a need for us to improvise and find a better way to bring people together in a common place (ifollowthemoney).

The Journey to Follow the Money Community

In the past, Follow the Money Community Reporters (as they are fondly called then) uses WhatsApp as a common place to interact, the WhatsApp group has grown to the point that we had to group them according to geopolitical zones in Nigeria.

We had six groups on WhatsApp and sometimes while waking up (even though I am always on the group at midnight communicating with the night owls amongst the Community Reporters) the user’s end up meeting more than 100 messages on the group which eventually led to us having to losing some of our community reporters. Hence, the need for a better community (common place) to bring people together to interact.

At a point, due to the staff strength of Connected Development as we have only two persons managing the 6 WhatsApp groups, the users and also the social media accounts, so we started missing out relevant contents coming from the community champions on the WhatsApp.

Also, on boarding new users on the platform (WhatsApp) started becoming a problem as we keep on repeating the same on boarding message over and over again.

Was That The Only Reason Why we Have to Switch to Have a Universal Community?

NO, we have a big vision of expanding across Africa as we started receiving an overwhelming request for expansion and we also plan on making Follow the Money a household name by having a movement in all the states in Nigeria while having community champions in all 774 local governments in Nigeria.

Also, we need to have a knowledge sharing platform where anyone who is interested in our work could learn from, connect and collaborate on Follow the Money activities while taking some factors into cognizance – like, where we can have people learning from one other, a platform where we can have a community (movement kind of thing). A place we can have people with a shared interest (Transparency and Accountability in Government in Africa and beyond) and a place people can be motivated to act by learning from the actions of others.

We are more aware that it was because people are not asking questions from our political office holders on how our collective monies have been spent, and that was why we keep on having same corruption narratives.

Alas, we had seen in the past and present when people in government reacted to our request knowing we follow the money (no one wants to be labeled someone who embezzled community project money).

Is That All?

With close to a thousand members,  the community is gradually translating into the largest movement of community champions working on transparency and accountability in their various community., These inspiring members are the intermediaries that are taking the Follow The Money work to local communities, mobilizing them, to engage their various government on basic infrastructure issues.

Do we Have a Requirement for Community Champions?

I still do not know how to answer this question but the most important thing is, a Follow the Money Community Champion is a fire starter. He is someone who thinks something must be done about the gross corruption in governance and he is ready to make an impact in his community by Following The Money. Thus enabling the community to have access to good governance,  improved infrastructures and in the proper sense, an empowered community who can speak for themselves and ask government questions about how their monies are spent.

Just as my friend, Babajide Durosaye (never met or know him o) categorized the community ecosystem in his article, I understand that there are movers of a community and such structure is also expected of a Transparent and Accountability community like ifollowthemoney, but for now – the conversation is just getting started and we hope to grow the community to that level someday soon.

We are in need of more enablers, and you may want to become one too by joining the conversation on Transparency and Accountability on ifollowthemoney which we created for change makers like you!

Have a contribution or clarification? Do not hesitate to leave a comment on the box below.

Photo by Nathaniel Tetteh on Unsplash