Tucked somewhere in
the heart of Isolo, a Lagos suburb, is the operational base of the
Community Life Project, implementing partners of the ReclaimNaija
project, a programme aimed at creating citizen participation in the
democratic process; promote electoral transparency, accountability by
citizens through social mobilisation and policy advocacy.
“The ReclaimNaija
project is truly owned by the people; the citizens are the voices and
faces of the project,” said Ngozi Iwere, executive director of the
Community Life Project, adding that finally, Nigerians can monitor
their votes, “They now have a platform that gives them a voice. The
platform serves as a collation centre. It collates the results of the
observed elections.” According to Ms Iwere, the collated results will
then be compared to the Independent National Electoral Commission
results and so would be used to monitor results announced by INEC.
ReclaimNaija is
enabled by a software called “Ushaidi”, a Kenyan word for testimony.
Ushaidi was developed by a group of IT savvy Kenyans. The software is a
map famous for its aid in monitoring crisis and has been used in
different ways. It was used during the 2007 Kenyan elections and was
also used in Haiti to locate victims of the earthquake, as well as
tackling crimes in Atlanta, United States.
According to
Francis Onahor, the information manager of ReclaimNaija, Nigeria is
poised to move from the traditional paradigm of civil society and
sponsored observers and monitors who normally would manually compile
results and observations of elections. Positioned to educate the
citizens of Nigeria on the need to participate in democratic
governance, ReclaimNaija engages in civic and voter education,
especially at the grassroots.
Reaching the grassroots
While explaining
the steps to achieving the project’s aim, Mr Onahor said: “We organise
workshops and seminars amongst the grassroots people. We educate them
on the need to take part in the electoral process. And if they think
there are no suitable candidates, we let them know that it is their
right and responsibility to cast their vote.” He said that it is better
to make a choice that portends the lesser evil especially as it
directly translates to the quality of lives of citizens in the next
four years. So far, Reclaim Naija has conducted seminars in all 36
states and 156 local government areas.
The seminars were
held in one local government per senatorial district and strategically
held in five in the Southwest states. “It was strategic to do so.
Lagos, for instance, has a history of mandate protection and in Ekiti a
stolen mandate was returned,” Mr Onahor added.
Popularity of the project
As to the
popularity and acceptance of the project, Ms Iwere noted that the
ReclaimNaija project is especially popular with the grassroots people
who have adopted it as their project and painstakingly organise
purposeful rallies with the “my vote, my power slogan”.
Ms Iwere said that
she is aware that the electoral body stipulates that all civil society
and non-governmental organisations are obliged to register with the
electoral body before they are allowed to monitor the elections. She
said that ReclaimNaija has a good relationship with the electoral body
and even worked cordially with them during the voter registration. “We
transmitted all reports and complaints to an email given to them by the
electoral body unfiltered to INEC. Messages were also sent to media
houses and we expected the media houses to do their investigations.”
Challenges
Commenting on the
journey so far, she said: “In the initial stage, it was difficult
because people would send reports and they would not mention the
specific location they were reporting from. When this trend was
noticed, the project supervisors acted by sensitising the people on the
need to go down to specifics as regards location, else their reports
would be useless.” ReclaimNaija draws its strength from its various
strategic partners; Community Development Departments (Nationwide),
Federation of Muslim Women Association in Nigeria (FOMWAN),
Communication for Change and Enough is Enough, and the implementing
partner, Community Life Project which has been on ground working with
the people for 18 years.
“It was, therefore, easy to locate and liaise with trade organisations, and grassroots persons,” Ms Iwere said.
