Ready To Lead Africa (RTLA), an ecosystem of emerging young African leaders, has unveiled the ‘FollowThePromises’ web and mobile app aimed at tracking the implementation of campaign promises of elected officials, especially governors.
Speaking at the unveiling event recently in Abuja, the Global President, RTLA, Godbless Otubure, said that the board of RTLA had begun a revolution by creating a form of e-governance and e-democracy in Nigeria.
Read also: The digital landscape and e-governance in Nigeria
According to him, the app is aimed at promoting transparency, accountability and citizenship participation in the socio-economic development in six states of the six geo-political zones in Nigeria.
He listed the pilot states as Sokoto, Akwa Ibom, Plateau, Ekiti, Gombe and Ebonyi.
He said the event was to enlighten the public on the functionality of the app; revealing how government officials could be monitored to fulfill the promises made to their citizens upon election.
“Today, what we are doing here is the unveiling of the followthepromises mobile and web application.
“The goal is to track the promises made by governorship candidates during their last elections and for the last couple of months that they have been sworn in, we are following the promises that they made, vis a vis , their manifestos.’’
Otubure added that his team was working with people who lived in every local community of the six states to get factual data on the happenings in their local communities.
“We are working with people who live in every local government of these states. Gone are the days when governors finish their tenure and then come up with a document of what they have done.
“This time, every day, the people who live in these communities are constantly updating us through our mobile apps; tracking everything that these governors are doing in the states.’’
He said the data would be provided by people living in different communities in the local government areas.
“For example there is a particular community that has not seen power for 28 years in the South-South, an oil rich state; there is a particular local government in the southwest, they have not seen power for eight years.
“The government does not give us this information; the people did. The app is very user friendly; so, the trust is there; we did not just wake up to build an app; we travelled to those communities by road, air; we ate and slept with the people in those communities.
Otubure said that importance of a technology in enabling accountable governance could not be overemphasised
On his part, Peter Burba, the Chief Launcher/ First Secretary, Embassy of the U.S., said that the initiative was a good one and expanding it to other states would go a long way to increasing transparency across all states of the nation.
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