Q&A: A civic-tech approach to budget and beneficial ownership transparency in Nigeria
[Editor’s Note: Over the past few weeks, R4D’s Leveraging Transparency to Reduce Corruption (LTRC) team reconnected with country experts and practitioners they have engaged with over the last couple of years to discuss their work together, and the challenges ahead. In a five-part series of interviews, they highlight the experiences and perspectives each of them have on strengthening extractives governance, transparency, and accountability. In this post, BudgIT’s Adejoke Akinbode and Vahyala Kwaga shares how their work with LTRC and other international NGOs, is encouraging the culture of knowledge-seeking among Nigerians.]
BudgIT is a Nigeria-based civic organization that applies technology to connect citizen engagement with institutional improvement to facilitate societal change. The civic-tech organization works with several international donor organizations, including R4D (through the LTRC program), to produce papers on policy documents and make recommendations on key issues in Nigeria’s extractive sector while simplifying and analyzing complex public finance, solid mineral and oil and gas reports in a way that is accessible and understandable to the citizen. They also work with government officials to disseminate and work on policy recommendations with the aim of improving the extractive industry.
BudgIT’s Head of Extractives, Adejoke Akinbode and their Senior Research and Policy Analyst, Vahyala Kwaga spoke on how BudgIT is encouraging the culture of knowledge-seeking among citizens and its impact on the economy and well-being of Nigeria.
BudgIT works to increase citizen engagement, government accountability, and the use of data. What kinds of activities do you do across these spaces?
Adejoke: We use data to hold the government accountable, promote citizen engagement and build the capacity of citizens and other civil society organizations (CSOs).
In the area of government accountability, we review and analyze government data so that citizens can use our analysis to ask the right questions from the government. This is part of our advocacy for greater transparency to the government.
When it comes to citizen engagement, we do some capacity building and organize workshops for CSOs, the media and even general citizens — especially at the grassroots level – to inform them on government activities in their communities. In doing this, we bring citizens and government together in a room to engage in dialogue.
We do this capacity building because BudgIT does not work in isolation. There are other CSOs that also call the government to action. We need to train them on how to go about it. For instance, we do training for journalists to increase their capacity on how to write their stories in an interesting form.
How do you shift your strategy on data use and accessibility for the different communities you work with (national, sub-national, local)? How do you use your work to advocate for policy changes?
Vahyala: BudgIT’s core strategy is to make information understandable, accessible, and comprehensible to citizens. Citizens are our primary stakeholders and because of that, the data that we mine must be presented in ways that a broad section of citizens can use them. But it’s not all about accessing data and making it attractive, but how it can lead to action. This is where BudgIT’s theory of change comes in. We believe that citizens are able, interested and will be galvanized to use this information to hold the government to account and to ensure that government makes a better decision to improve their livelihood. It’s a theory of change — scientifically speaking it can be falsified — but we know that with the right kind of pressure, with the right type of engagement and with a long-term focus on re-orientation, citizens will begin to see those clear linkages between the government’s decision-making and the improvement of their own livelihoods. Citizens will begin to see themselves as a critical component of the government’s decision-making system. Our theory of change informs our strategy in our online and offline platforms, where we bring citizens and government together in a room as part of our citizen engagement program.
When dealing with national data, sub-national data, or local data for grassroots engagement we have different types of approaches.
For national data, one strategy we try to implement is the framing of data uptake for citizens in the form of a long-term country plan. Government exists to perpetually create, improve and expand on its mandate and the livelihood of people. So how can we get people to understand how critical healthcare is or how critical education and infrastructure are? We show them how spending has been carried out. We show them how money has been utilized. We show them where the government is unable to appropriately utilize the monies that it had budgeted, resulting in problems in the form of poor service delivery and in their individual and collective outcomes being impacted.
At the sub-national level, we encourage citizens to understand and note different levels of government. The federal government has a distinct constitutionally defined scope. State governments have a distinct, limited scope as well as the local governments. So, there is civic education inherent in our strategy and communication as well as in the design of the information we put out.
In messaging on local government, we try to show citizens that this is meant to be the closest form of government and that perhaps we should begin to have a conversation around the restructuring of the scope and the mandate of these local governments – specifically when it comes to social services delivery.
What are some of the main challenges for civil society in addressing corruption in Nigeria?
Adejoke: In Nigeria, some of the challenges we have seen in the civic space is low transparency in public data and information. From the national to the local level of government, there is poor fiscal transparency – in budgetary information, among other things. Although at the national level, the government has been trying to be more transparent, the information provided is often technical and voluminous. It is not enough to have this information released to the public; the government must also ensure that it is presented in a transparent manner and simplified for citizens to understand.
We also have poor accountability when it comes to decision-making in government in Nigeria. The three arms of government (executive, legislative and Judiciary) often make decisions without carrying citizens along. At the end of the day, the decision they make does not align with what citizens need at that point in time. CSOs have been fighting regarding citizens and budgeting. The government should carry out a needs assessment in communities before making decisions.
Because the quality of data the governments put out is poor, citizens need more capacity to understand the information released by the government and the implications of the policies it wants to implement.
There is also the issue of time-sensitive funding constraints for the CSOs. In the case of BudgIT, a project may be funded by a donor but the subject being pursued is always achievable in the next two years. When the project funding expires, we often have to stop until we can secure funding from another organization. This issue is not peculiar to BudgIT alone. Many CSOs abandon projects — not because they wish to do so, but because there is no funding. Sometimes, a project is continued with “in-house” funds — but there is a limit to what you can do without basic funding on a project.
There are so many other issues that we face in the civic space, but those are the four major challenges that BudgIT and a lot of other CSOs face.
Are there any challenges that are specific to the extractive sector?
Adejoke: For the extractive sector, I will say it is the lack of information. It’s very hard to get data from the extractive sector. I think the most available data is the NNPC report from the government every month, which they have halted since they transitioned to NNPC Limited. The NNPC report is about 30 pages — quite small — but not everyone can understand the report because oil and gas data are very, very technical. And this is where we came in — analyzing these reports and breaking them down for citizens to understand. Beyond NNPC, we have reports from some oil companies but only about 3 or 4 of them include figures in their annual reports. So, the data is very technical and it’s not readily available.
Another issue for this sector is the lack of benefit transfer. Oil-rich states get 13% derivation apart from the normal allocation to all states. But if you go to the communities in these states, they lack basic infrastructure. I think those state governments don’t really spend this revenue in these communities; rather, they use it to develop the urban cities. Although the government has developed different ways to transfer benefits—we have the 13% derivation and the Niger Delta Development Commission — these oil-rich communities are still really underdeveloped. I have been to an oil-rich community in Bayelsa state where the only primary school is built by community members, and they don’t have a secondary school. Their children trek to 3 to 4 other communities before they can go to (secondary) school. I have also been to a community in Rivers state where their river is totally black — they don’t really have usable water. It’s that bad for these communities. These people don’t really see their representatives in the government, except during the election period, which is every four years.
What are some of your broad findings on the best methods of communicating data?
Vahyala: I love the foundation Adejoke just laid in saying it is difficult to get data in the extractive sector. You are dealing with the Nigerian ‘goose’ that constantly lays the “golden egg” and the government holds this extractive enterprise very close to its chest. That means information is going to be very, very non-sequential and when it does come out, you’re only going to see what you’re supposed to see. Be that as it may, BudgIT has found that breaking down this very technical data is useful. We have realized that by breaking down the available information into attractive, engaging formats on Facebook and Twitter or even animations and videos on YouTube, we have been able to reach people more effectively.
Human psychologists discovered that humans have a limited attention span, so when things get too long or too cumbersome, a lot of people lose interest. We try to ensure that we design our communications, analyses, and the data we convey in ways that are easily understandable and attractive. We try to ensure that the information is presented in a way that can be assimilated easily by Nigerians.
In addition, we have seen that engaging Nigerians more conversationally has led to a higher uptake and engagement with our analysis. We have seen that presenting a sort of formal or slightly stiff presentation of our findings tends to have less traction, but when we are a bit more conversational and a bit less formal, we see more interactions.
Also, when we adopt content or platform-specific approaches — a bit less formal depending on the platform, we see more and more interactions. For example, we use the fact that platforms like Twitter and Facebook, although similar, have a different ethos, which is also different from YouTube’s focus on video and animation.
Finally, we have also observed that engaging in radio interviews, especially for people who are not online, has been very effective. A large number of, perhaps less educated, Nigerians and those that cannot afford to buy smartphones engage in the use of radio and terrestrial TVs. The interviews we have on financial management and extractive sector issues have been shown to really reach these people. In programs that have call-in features or immediate feedback features, we get a high amount of engagement from truly interested and curious Nigerians.
These are some of the approaches and methods that we will certainly be exploring to a much greater degree in the coming years.
What activities have you collaborated with LTRC on?
Adejoke: We are working on our second project with LTRC. In the past, BudgIT produced a policy brief assessing the impact of the low oil price environment on state sustainability. That project was informed by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
When Covid-19 started, the crude oil price crashed, while states in Nigeria fully depend on allocation from crude oil and make little to no IGR from other sectors. So, we launched a study to see how these states sustained themselves as the price of crude oil and the foreign exchange rate crashed. We focused on four oil-producing states — Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers state. We tried to look at how the undue cost of governance had been institutionalized into the budgetary processes in these oil-producing states, how they implemented capital projects in 2020, and how we can compare what had been done in terms of capital projects at the time, to what they had done in the past three years. We were able to establish their revenue capacity, how they perform independent of the 13% derivation, how they have built their reliance on this 13% derivation, and the effect of all these in a low oil price environment like Nigeria. Of the four states, when it comes to IGR only Rivers state was able to perform well to some extent. Most of them couldn’t do without the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) allocation. They rely on it. We also investigated how they were going to survive without the allocation if crude oil ever stops in these oil-producing states. We are thinking of investigating the five other oil-producing states as well.
We are still working on the current LTRC project. We just concluded two policy briefs — one on beneficial ownership transparency in Nigeria, the objective of which is to review the state of play of beneficial ownership and its role in mitigating state capture in Nigeria, especially when it comes to natural resource wealth. The other brief was on contract transparency reforms in Nigeria at the state level. It explored how state government can be transparent in terms of awarding contracts. We focused on the state level because the sub-national government receives almost half of the country’s revenue. So, we really need to know how state governments are spending this money. Both documents will be used for capacity building of CSOs and the media in early 2023.
We also conducted key informant interviews. We compiled a list of questions and sent them to our peer CSOs to test their knowledge of beneficial ownership and contract transparency. This will inform our capacity building of them in 2023. We were able to receive responses from several organizations and we have put this together in a summary document.
We’re also creating a mini register for all the corruption cases in Nigeria on our fixouroil website. We want to put that register online so that people can see the number of corruption cases and their status in the legal system. Afterwards, we are going to have a dissemination event where we are going to bring together stakeholders from the government, CSOs, and the media to discuss our findings.
What do you anticipate being the next major challenge for data usage in the next few years? What would be some of the main topics to focus on in Nigeria?
Vahyala: For our research department in general and the extractive unit in particular, there are two pressing problems that we have identified. We are already having conversations with our communications team to ensure that these do not become threats.
The first one is the posture of the government towards transparency. Nigeria is going to experience a change of government in 2023 and looking at the track record of the present administration, it may be appropriate to begin planning towards a crackdown on freedom of speech and presentation of public information. We have seen – especially across Europe – how governments are leaning more towards the right or centre-right and that says a lot about how governments will react to regular questions from citizens. Of course, Africa is very different from Europe, but we are not unaware that the tendencies towards authoritarianism and crackdown on civil liberty cannot have a resurgence in Africa and in Nigeria in particular. We are looking at how to consolidate a lot of information that we have and to strengthen the new relationship that will emerge when the new administration comes in. Hopefully, it will be much more transparent and accountable than the previous government. We are planning towards that.
Secondly, the perennial two themes: the issue of misinformation and how information can be manipulated for a various range of reasons, which Adejoke already emphasized. I would like to reiterate that all the information we use is from government sources and cited as such. This extends to our policy memos and briefs and even our infographics. We are always keen to point out our information source so that citizens can verify for themselves. Even when extrapolations are made, which is allowed in statistical analysis, we make sure it is stated.
A third, still debatable challenge, is the reception of the citizens towards this information. Recently, a random sample by a statistical agency asked African youths what direction they believe their governments are heading. We saw that Nigerian youths seem to think that their government is not heading in any particular direction. This may lead to a level of apathy which is fundamental to the work that we do. The success of our work depends on the mood of the youth and when this mood is dampened by pessimism, cynicism, and an almost existential dread that things are not going as they should, it means that the information may not be utilized to hold the government accountable.
We are thinking of strategies to ensure that youths are engaged, to ensure that they see hope in providing some level of collective action. That really makes the difference between the governments that work for the people and governments that just exist for the pleasure of a few elites.
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