BudgIT Foundation, Nigeria’s leading civic-tech organization at the vanguard of fiscal transparency and accountability in Nigeria and three other African countries, will from September 13 through 18 this year celebrate its 10th Anniversary of championing the cause of people-centric and development-oriented budgeting systems advocacy in the countries of its focus over the years.
Tagged “A decade of Civic-Innovation and Social impact”, the celebration would feature BudgIT’s achievements in the last decade as well as enable the civil-tech organization to host a series of signature events, including its Anniversary Lecture, Hackathon and Dinner & Awards ceremony.
A statement by the organization’s Lead, Media and Communications, Damilola Ogundipe, recalled that since 2011 when it was founded, BudgIT’s work within Nigeria’s civic-tech space had moved beyond simplifying the budget using an array of civic-tech tools, into facilitating budget reforms at both national and sub-national levels, including budget access, improved sectoral financing, budget transparency and accountability and budget implementation.
Ogundipe also stated that the organization had also led and co-led some of the biggest advocacy projects and initiatives in Nigeria, including the Budget Padding, OpenNass, OccupyNigeria, State of States and Open Budget campaigns.
According to the communications Lead, BudgIT also recorded groundbreaking achievements, leading the CSO community that was instrumental to the Nigerian Government’s agreement to sign up for OGP in July 2016.
While speaking about the landmark celebration, Oluseun Onigbinde, BudgIT’s Lead Director and Co-founder shared some of BudgIT’s significant achievements in the last 10 years and expectations for the next decade.
He enthused: “The last ten years have been nothing short of tremendous for us at BudgIT. Despite the challenges, BudgIT has recorded significant achievements while facilitating improved fiscal transparency and accountability through social advocacy, civic innovation, institutional engagements, partnerships and active citizen mobilization.
“We have played a major role in defining the landscape of Nigeria’s civic-tech space and we are currently engraving our footprints within Africa’s civic-tech space”, the civil activist added.
The statement further expatiated: “BudgIT has reached millions of citizens both digitally and offline on budget and public resource management related matters, thereby bringing arcane content to that of common knowledge and initiating them towards action.
“Likewise, we have supported the process of extractive audit transparency through strategic partnerships with organisations like Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) on improving its audit process and the release of NNPC’s monthly operational and financial reports under the current administration.
“BudgIT’s success in facilitating budget access at the subnational level has been possible through its partnership with the World Bank, Kaduna State Government, British Council, European Union and other institutions.
“These partnerships have reinforced the call for transparency and accountability at the state level leading to the availability of state budgets as well as increasing access and publications to 34 budgets in the last five years. Hitherto, BudgIT has assisted Nigerian states in developing their citizens’ budgets, while replicating the capacity to develop strategies for effective budget advocacy at the subnational level in over 150 CSOs across the country”, it added
In addition, Ogundipe stated that “through BudgIT’s project tracking platform, Tracka, we have ensured effective service delivery through project monitoring in 32 states. We have facilitated budget implementation and service delivery at the grassroots through continuous engagement and citizen mobilization.”
In his remarks, BudgIT’s Co-founder and CTO, Joseph Agunbiade, said: “So far we have tracked over 16,738 projects worth billions of naira, ensured the completion of over 7000 constituency projects, facilitated 15,467 town hall meetings through our 37 project tracking officers across Nigeria, with support from over 1500 community champions currently present in 32 states. This makes us really proud of how far we have come”
The civic-tech organization also stated that beyond institution-led engagements, its achievements wouldn’t have been possible without the constant support from donors and partners like Gates Foundation, Luminate, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, OSIWA, OXFAM, among others, who have consistently committed resources to BudgIT’s vision.
BudgIT also acknowledged the support of some personalities, including Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, Bosun Tijani, Tony Elumelu, Ory Okolloh and many others, stressing that these partnerships and relationships are very critical in its next phase.
On BudgIT’s future prospects, Onigbinde said: “The next ten years are very critical for us at BudgIT. We hope to scale our work across Africa and the Middle East. As a civic-tech powerhouse, we also aim to leverage emerging technologie to improve budget access and participatory governance, which is a very important aspect of what we do.”
