The Lead partner and
co-founder of BudgIT with Joseph Agunbiade in 2011, Oluseun Onigbinde, in this
chat with REMMY NWEKE told ITRealms following his stint with the
Aspen Institute New Voices Fellowship and Stanford University; that they are enthroning civic technology
culture in Nigeria with what started as a hackathon organized by Co-Creation
Hub some five years ago.
Excerpts:
How did you get here?
Wow. Getting here has been with the support of God, people and the
entire ecosystem. We have been very fortunate to come at a time when there was
Co-Creation Hub who are interested in seeding social tech startups across the
world. The budget was also being published by the Budget Office of the
Federation and we were very only acting as infomediaries for the public. We
also got a lot of people who believed in us from the start. This included
Indigo Trust, Tony Elumelu Foundation, Open Society Initiative for West Africa.
We have been able to reach over 1 million Nigerians and also have presence in
16 states where we track local community projects.
What can you tell us
about the Aspen Institute New Voices Fellowship?
Aspen New Voices Fellowship is geared towards raising new voices across
the world with focus on health and global development issues. These are people
who are working to make an impact in their fields and they range from
scientists, professors, activists, policy makers and social entrepreneurs. They
are currently looking for new fellows and I advise folks doing impactful work
in this area to apply.
What is BudgIT, its
objectives and goals?
The goal of BudgIT is to distribute access data to the public in a
simple and accessible manner. BudgIT's work is to ensure that every Nigerian
has equal access to the fiscal state of the society and uses such information
to demand service delivery and accountability. BudgIT uses any lawful means to
make this happen and we have a strong presence on social media and also work in
rural communities. We track public projects in these states.
Can you share with us
what particular story that triggered or inspired the project BudgIT?
I wanted to leave the bank and do something different. I started with a
climate change organization known as Green Acts which did not work out as I
thought. I learnt my lesson and while working for the bank I still was looking
for something to do. I was just sitting on my desk and I reviewed the
applications by Co-Creation Hub. I thought of making the budget accessible
after checking up civic projects online. I called it Budget4u. Later, we
changed the name to BudgIT. That's how the phenomenon started.
How has it been
championing the project in terms of how easy and difficulties you have faced in
recent times?
Leading any entity is not an easy task and it requires to continuously
keep being creative in ensuring value is delivered for citizens, investors and
all stakeholders. We also have to consider balance in all that we do. It is not
easy because a lot of people are averse to accountability of public funds. They
take it as being rude. The military hangover still works on them but they don’t
understand that democracy is strengthened through accountability. It is a work
that is never done.
How do you feel when
Mr. Bill Gates commended your effort back home in Nigeria at the lecture?
I was actually travelling and when I landed, my social media platforms
were buzzing. It was delightful moment that the richest man in the world and
also the co-chair of the world's largest philanthropy recognizes our work. I
was so elated and this kind of validation keeps one on.
Do you think the
Nigeria environment is adopting the BudgIT goals?
Yes. The citizens are getting it and they are delighted when we share
new pieces of information in interesting formats. They get it that it is
necessary that they can participate in democracy effectively beyond voting in
elections. We also have to acknowledge that public institutions are also
interested in putting more data out there. We have worked with NEITI, NNPC and
other agencies in making data more accessible and incentivizing actions from
citizens to ask questions. The environment is changing. Maybe not as rapid as we
will want but there is an improvement.
Are you getting the
kind of cooperation you require for mainstreaming the ideals of BudgIT in
Nigerian society?
As said before, we are trying to instill the idea of transparency and
accountability in Nigeria. Think how we have been making a lot of advocacy on
making National Assembly finances open. There is still a lot of resistance from
the political class to make budgets and public finances closed. It has nothing
to do more than corruption. It is a tough climb but we have to take it step by
step.
Has BudgIT been
replicated? If yes, where? And if no, why not?
Yes. I can't say in the exact way but we have people pushing ideas such
as TransparencIT or VoteIT. A bit off for me that people trying to take our
naming pattern but I am also interested in expanding the civic technology
space. The field is so wide and the work is enormous and idea of making issues
simple can be applied to different areas of governance.
How can BudgIT be used
beyond a national budget monitoring?
We do work for subnational transparency, making it easy for people in
states to have more access to the budgets. We also work to support institutions
in Nigeria to improve reporting and presentation. We are also interested in
extractive sector transparency. It is not just about the national budget, we
have worked to advocate more system-wide transparency and get the society to be
more efficient.
I think it was BudgIT
that blow open the millions of Naira, former Lagos State governor, Raji Fashola
used in building a website, kindly recount the story?
It is not a whistle-blowing exercise as most people know it. We just
brought forward the data presented by the Lagos State Government and we made
that line public. The funny thing is that we were interested in interrogating
other items in the list of contracts published by the State government but that
just took over the news cycle. Lagos State has a Public Procurement Law that
mandates it to electronically publish all its contract. It did that and we
brought out the data from its haystack and put it into a tweet. It was nothing
political and it ties to all the issues of subnational transparency we
advocate. We can't talk about fixing this country without transparency and
accountability.
Do you think the
whistle blowing of those facts yielded the right results?
It did not in my own view. The media did not look into the entire
contracts. Mr. Fashola provided a response that muddled the issues and showed
he was not informed of the actual cost of these things. It also reinforces that
there was no competitive bidding. One thing that baffles me is that why can't
every taxpayer have access to contract information and also bid for it? I don’t
know but public funds are sacred to me. It is a huge burden of trust to be
given the responsibility to manage public funds. When we say Open
Contracting is important to efficient use of public resources, politicians
ignore it. There is no data more difficult to get from government than a list
of contract, most times it reeks of points of patronage. Believe me, startups
in Yaba can build that site for N5m. There was a petition submitted by another
organization, I guess the EFCC was not interested. It was nothing personal
against Mr Fashola but brings the question into light why does every contract
with government has to be one-hit that fixes one for life?
What other milestone
can you say BudgIT has achieved since its foundation?
A lot and I will say we have given the budgets to more people,
supported at least 8 public institutions in free software and institution
building, partnered with 35 organizations and also we were instrumental in
Nigeria joining the Open Government Partnership. We are leading the civic
technology culture in Nigeria and bringing the transparency into light. The
impact can be seen on our website: yourbudgit.com
Where do you see
BudgIT in the next 2 to five years?
We are working on a medium term fund and also ensure we become a
stronger institution within. We are focused on measuring impact effectively,
delivering value to our donors and also ensure that we spread our work in the
states and in the sub-region.
What message do you
have for the youth with respect to governance, especially in Africa and Nigeria
moving forward?
The young people of Africa need to understand that their future is
being expended daily and they can't leave governance to everyday politicians.
They need to participate not just by voting but by demanding accountability. We
need young voices rising up to demand more efficient use of our
resources.
What next?
To continuously strive towards building a society where the use of
public treasury is transparently accessible and explained Nigerians in the
simplest and accessible form.
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Pix; Oluseun Onigbinde, co-founder BudgIT
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