Excerpts From My Webinar With @socialgoodlagos on Government Accountability
"We have to also realise that hunger, poverty, unemployment, inequality, climate change, corruption, poor educational and health systems are equally agelong pandemics, and attach similar severity and effort towards eradicating them by 2030 - leaving no one behind."
"On @ifollowthemoney's part, beyond our advocacy and accountability campaigns, we navigate and circumvent the seas of fake news to sieve, analyse, aggregate and publish live data timeously. Not just from Nigeria, but also from our branches domiciled in 6 other African nations most of whom face similar challenges. On social media, we use the hashtag #FollowCOVID19Money to keep track of donations and expenditures.
"As much as practicable, we keep track of not just cashflow, but every other relief item donated by international development partners, private persons and corporations, government institutions, and so forth. This publication is a live google sheet accessible to members of the public any day, any time --- and this is what we ask of the federal and state governments. The governments of Lagos and Kaduna states have aggregated and published theirs."
"This is also the approach undertaken by Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter where he aggregated and published his COVID-19 donations worth billions of dollars and enjoined the public to keep track in the spirit of transparency. And that's his private money! Now why is Nigeria's government failing to do same? The failure to do this has induced an atmosphere for mischief makers to capitalise and peddle potent fake news."
"In the USA, there is the Digital Transparency and Accountability Act which compels details of government cash flow, debt, revenue and expenditures to be published digitally. This is lacking in Nigeria. There must be a mandatory legal obligation in Nigeria to compel MDAs to "DIGITALLY PUBLISH" all revenues and expenditures in a timely manner; and also prescribes sanction defaulting public individuals and MDAs. This publication must be user-friendly. Where possible, there should be a simplified version for citizens to digest and engage."
