Innovative use of ICT (Ushahidi) to promote Electoral Transparency and Good Governance In Nigeria The ReclaimNaija Story Chuks Ojidoh Deputy Project Director Community Life Project/Reclaimnaija New Media & Governance: Tools And Trends May 15, 2012

WHAT IS RECLAMNAIJA? ReclaimNaija is a broad-based citizens’ platform set up in 2010 by Community Life Project (CLP). It brings together a vast network of CLP’s grassroots partners across the country comprising mostly informal sector workers and trade-based-groups (such as associations of mechanics, carpenters, vulcanisers, welders, okada riders and owners [commercial motor bike riders/owners], market women and men, electricians, tailors, hairdressers, community development associations), civil society and faith-based organisations as well as Government Agencies.

WHY DID WE SET UP RECLAIMNAIJA?? We set up Reclaimnaija to enhance the participation of grassroots people, organizations and local institutions in promoting Electoral Transparency and Democratic Accountability in Nigeria. We believe that electoral transparency is a prerequisite for good governance and public accountability ;and that Elected officers can be more effectively held accountable if they were truly elected by the people. We wanted to plug the gap in existing CSO interventions by focusing on the demand side of governance, through popular participation.

OUR STRATEGIES We have a two-prong strategy – Community Organising and the Innovative Use of Ushahidi (Ushahidi is a web platform that allows the gathering of messages via SMS, , tweets and direct posting on the website).CLP has a rich track record of community organising and grassroots empowerment dating back to Thus, on one hand, we are harnessing the social capital accumulated over the years to advance our work on popular participation while, on the other hand, we are seizing the opportunity of New Media and Ushahidi to provide a mechanism for that participation.

HOW ARE WE USING USHAHIDI PLATFORM AND COMMUNITY ORGANISING TO PROMOTE POPULAR PARTICIPATION? The first thing CLP has done is to adapt the Ushahidi platform to suit our Nigerian context. To do this, we had to introduce some innovations in our deployment of the Ushahidi platform. We integrated the Ushahidi platform into a website. Many of the Ushahidis deployed around the world at that time were deployed as stand-alone reporting / crisis mapping platforms. We created a physical community organising platform aptly called ReclaimNaija.

The name, we chose for the physical platform – ReclaimNaija - which means “Take Back Nigeria”, effectively serves both as an identity and a call to action. Mindful of our community organising agenda, we christened the Ushahidi-driven website reclaimnaija.net, to ensure there is synergy between our virtual and physical platforms. Rather than use Cloudvox, which is the medium for sending voice reports on the Ushahidi, we set up a call system that allows citizens to send in reports in four different languages – Hausa, Igbo, Pidgin and Yoruba.

We have pioneered the deployment of the Ushahidi for pre-election work by using it to monitor the Voter Registration Exercise. It was imperative to have citizen participate actively in monitoring the exercise. The platform received 12,000 messages from citizens during the Voter Registration Exercise. We entered into a working relationship with the national electoral body, INEC, opened a direct line of communication through which we sent incident reports collated on the Ushahidi platform, in real- time. The reports fed to INEC aided troubleshooting and helped to improve the efficiency of the Electoral process.

The strategic partnerships entered into with Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria (FOMWAN), the Okada Community, Community Development departments nationwide and Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) were crucial to the success recorded in the deployment of the ICT platform. The platform received 285,000 messages during the April elections from 10,753 locations, in addition to 3,669 phone calls and voice reports. Apart from the strategic partnerships mentioned above, we collaborate with other CSOs working on governance issues such as ENOUGH IS ENOUGH EiE, Centre for Social Justice and the CSOs Election Situation Room.

We use the platform not only for collating reports but also for very significant messaging that empowers the citizens to actively participate in promoting electoral transparency and democratic accountability. (For instance, polling units) Apart from the strategic partnerships mentioned above, we collaborate with other CSOs working on governance issues such as ENOUGH IS ENOUGH EiE, Centre for Social Justice and the CSOs Election Situation Room. Since the April General Elections, we have been using the platform to interact with citizens on governance issues; we used it to collate citizens’ views and reports on the fuel subsidy and to monitor the staggered elections in Kogi, Adamawa, Bayelsa, Sokoto, and Cross River states.

FEATURES OF RECLAIMNAIJA.NET VISIT

Current Deployment of the reclaimnaija.net Ushahidi platform: We will continue to use the platform to: promote participatory, transparent governance and public accountability and for reporting incidents of Corruption / Abuse of Office and Human Rights Abuses. educate citizens on government policies and programmes track Project and monitor government projects

How can CSOs and other Stakeholders benefit from the reclaimnaija.net Platform? Apart from serving as a resource on governance information to CSOs, reclaimnaija.net can be deployed to collate citizens’ reports and views on any development and governance issue. Any CSO or stakeholder, that so desires, can use the reclaimnaija.net platform to collate specific reports relating to their area of focus. It will also be useful for Coalitions of CSOs working in different parts of the country on a common agenda to collate and map incident reports from their various locations.

Challenges The effectiveness of the platform depends on the amount of buy-in from citizens. Crowdsourcing for Ushahidi requires a lot of community organising and social marketing. The tendency to duplicate efforts within the CSO community can adversely affect the scale of impact. There would definitely be greater impact if CSOs partner more effectively in the deployment and use of Ushahidi and other ICT platforms in Nigeria

“ true change can only occur when the organized citizens are the real drivers of that change ”- CLP’s long held philosophy THANK YOU