Creating the Nigerian Legislative Scorecard: Call for Ideas, Suggestions and Action.
August 28th, 2007 | Published in Advocacy, Governance, Nigeria | 6 Comments
For democracy to be meaningful and thrive, the governed must be informed, proactive, forward thinking, and able to monitor the activities of their elected officials. I know several of these people are not “elected”, but since they have somewhat wangled their ways into various elected positions, they need to be monitored and assessed on their performance.
After some two years of cyber-ranting and discussing issues on governance in Nigeria, I’ve become persuaded that it’s necessary to create a citizen-driven system to monitor and document events in the various legislatures in the country, including the national assemblies (http://www.nassnig.org/). It is time to put our legislators under the spot light.
The system - for simplicity sake referred to as Nigerian Legislative Scorecard (NLS) - will be an online repository for news, debate archive, and other relevant information pertaining to legislating in Nigeria.
As stated earlier, the Kenyan Mzalendo is a great example of this concept.
Please find below my (poorly organized) thoughts on how the system would operate; your comments while highly appreciated will also help to shape the concept appropriately:
The success and relevance of the system will be determined by the ability to source information from the assemblies and keep such in a manner that is accessible and editable by all stakeholders.
Stakeholders, editors, and contributors are anyone willing to source, or with ability to acquire, verifiable information relevant and pertaining to the subject matter. Sourcing information can be as simple and passive as coping and pasting online news articles to actively obtaining and scanning documents, acquiring images and video (camera phones will come handy here), taping TV programs, and doing interviews.
The idea is to acquire and assemble those pieces of information in a manner that can be easily used to assess the performance of Nigerian legislators at the end of their terms.
All available forms of citizen and new media techniques (wikis, blogs, forum, etc) will be used to drive and sustain the NLS. To set the ball rolling Grandiose Parlor/AfricanLoft will contribute some bandwidth to host a temporary site which will be in the form of a blog for stakeholders to contribute contents that can be readily sourced over the Internet. This site will be upgraded accordingly and frequently as the site gains more traction and leverage.
This is not a venture that can be done alone, there is need for across-board collaboration for the NLS to be meaningful. This is the least we can do for ourselves as Nigerians, and for our country if we hope to see some changes in the land.
Those are just my initial thoughts and there is room for modification and clarification. If the idea makes sense or not - please say so. Run it through your mind and offer suggestions, please. Thanks.
August 29th, 2007 at 8:36 am (#)
[…] Read more on Grandiose Parlor how this can be done: Creating the Nigerian Legislative Scorecard: Call for Ideas, Suggestions and Action. […]
September 4th, 2007 at 1:52 am (#)
It’s a great idea.
November 18th, 2007 at 4:00 am (#)
Pardon my lateness in commenting on this subject. It was a deliberate act for I have had to think deep on this and the more I think the more I find myself asking questions on how to make this really work and the more I asked the questions, the more problems crop up. As I did not want to sound negative and as I do not want to give the “yes go ahead signal” without conviction, I decided to keep mute for the time being.
Now revisiting Imnakoya’s gallant ideology and willingness to work hard so that we can all become proactive in monitoring performance of “leaders” in Nigeria, first I say to Imnakoya, well done for all your past present and future interventions, write up and ideas.
About the Legislative Scorecards, hmmm first, maybe the Election Petitions should be allowed to conclude and a 6 months period of grace is given so that the dust settles. Apart from Lagos state, most of the other states are very unsettled in governance. Even the office of the president is not as solid as we would like to think. It is a good thing that the Petition Tribunal have been given until the 2nd week in December 07 to finalise the petitions. Hopefully come January 08, we would know who is who in governance. But for now, there is so much confusion, + empty talks, false claims and hype about Governance in the different states in Nigeria. The Ettehgate scandal has thrown the MPs into disarray, and they are just about rebuilding their political standing and as they have been so discredited, where do we start measuring their performance? For example, it seems Bankole has been accepted and is now here to stay, but he is just beginning the task, and needs time before the MP performance could be monitored. What Nigeria witnessed during the Ettehgate Scandal shows how difficult it is to really assess and accept what the concept of tuth is in Nigeria.
The very idea sounds good and is definitely needed, but in reality, Nigeria being such a complex and elusive place, how can we really go about collecting CREDITABLE data? We hear of lies, lies, lies and nothing but lies. For example one minute we hear that the Nigerian Senate spent N500million naira for live telecast and when investigated, we are told it is less than 1/4 that amount and nothing is said about where the balance has dissappeared to. What do we believe. In Ondo State, we read that Agagu has done this and that, built roads, put electricity via solar power in most rural areas etc etc but in reality, Ondo State is mostly in darkness and the people are suffering big time. What do we beleive? Nigeria is not like the Western world where matters are investigated and the truth revealed and people brought to books either through voluntary resignation or sacked. See how Patricia Etteh hung on to power and tried to fake/bully her way through and how long it took to get rid of her. Even as i write there are still many unanswered questions sorrounding the Ettehgate Scandal. What happened to Ehindero and the multi million theft scandal?
Hence first, the media cannot be relied on and what is broadcasted is not creditable in terms of achievement. People need to be on ground and the work of verifying claims to achievement is a mamouth task, so how do we get verifiable reports and data? Even if people are physically on ground, can they be trusted not to be bought over and give false reports? If trusted, can they in Nigeria get creditable info? Who funds all these? Who acts as the Asp or plays the role of the Antagonist to cross check reports? For the Legislative Scorecards to be creditable, workable and become a permanent feauture in Nigerian Political life, we must get things right from the start. Most of the elected officials in Nigeria know zilch about democracy and proper governance. Most are there for what they can plunder and do not care about democracy at all.
Am I on the right track here or have I misunderstood the topic? Are you (we) all ready to start and continue to the end this idea? Are we all ready for the task? Are we ready to see to it that bad leaders are punished?
That said, I am for putting in place a monitoring program, but I beleive we should really spend more time working out the dynamics and finetunning it and then do a test run, possibly on just one state (even if on Local Govermnent level first, then advance to Governorship Level). Gradually we do a SWOT analysis of this test case and if successful, gradually expand the idea until we can deal with Nigeria as a whole. This could take years but the wait and pain could be worth it in the end. Nothing ventured nothing gained so I am not against this idea, and will like to be very positive, but we cannot overlook the hurdles.
Pardon me if I write lenghtily, for I belong to the literary field and not the sciences.
I will appreciate a feedback.
November 18th, 2007 at 10:22 pm (#)
Omotaylor: Thanks for the comment. The post is an attempt to spark conversations on the need to hold Nigerian elected officials accountable, and how this can be achieved.
Availability and access to information is key in any democratic process. This is not the case in Nigeria. Try searching online for your the legislators representing your state in Abuja. What do you know about them? What committees do they sit on and what bills have they passed? As basic as these questions are, they are the threads that hold the fabric of democracy and offer it its credibility.
I don’t understand what you mean by “credible information”. The idea is not to “create” new information, but to make more public existing but hidden information on the legislature. Yes, Nigeria is vast and as you stated, it is prudent to start on a smaller scale. Are you aware that several of the sessions at the assembly are open to the public?
The blueprint for the scorecard is far from finished, and it’s final shape and form will be determined by inputs such as yours and real-time conditions in Nigeria.
November 19th, 2007 at 1:09 pm (#)
Dear Imnakoya, as always I appreciate all your good works and I am very supportive of them and I am ready to partake of any project etc to assist the success of democracy in Nigeria. Even things I am not aware of will be learnt for we all stand to be educated in areas unknown. For this I keep my eyes peeled in Grandiose Parlour to follow the trend and research if need be.
As you may have gathered, I am from Ondo State and things are not settled at all there and for one I did not feel the need to dig into the current governmental activities as they are shambolic and untrue. We are awaiting the verdict of the Election Petition Tribunal and the return of the Governorship flag to the rightful owner Dr Olusegun Mimiko. Hopefully this wait will not be too long and I personally can then move on to issues concerning proper governance and democracy in Ondo State, for right now there is no such thing.
About “credible information”, what I mean is being able to verify that whatever report we are given either via the media, information officers etc of each state are not subjective and misleading. I wasnt referring to existing legislation, for this is the guiding principle, which may or may not be followed. If not followed, how do we ascertain this especially if they are misleading? The “Nigerian Factor” is always at play in all areas of Nigerian life and politics and must be given serious thought.
Maybe I need a bit more explanation on “Legislative Scorecards” for I beleive rating any government or department on this will include rating their adherence to and success in any given legislation.
I wish more people will join in this discourse for from my experience with comments of many people to issues on African Loft, there is lots to learn from people’s dissenting and agreeing comments and ideas.
November 20th, 2007 at 1:14 pm (#)
The ‘Scorecard’ tag may be misleading, however, it conveys the ultimate purpose of this citizen-driven data/information system.
At the moment there is no way of going back in time to review what happened in the legislature. It is not possible (or easy) to track performance of legislators using the national assembly website (http://www.nassnig.org/).
The information needed is really in the public domain, it’s just that there are not easily accessible. It is also not very malleable to falsification.
Please take a look at Congresspedia http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Congresspedia and compare to nassnig.org.