Happy to be an ambassador of the Open Knowledge Foundation and pushing OKFN work in Nigeria means a lot to me. So what have I been doing?
Firstly, I am on the board of the Openspending Global Steering Committee driven to improve the platform as well as push the civic engagement further. We are working together on integrating the Openspending API with BudgIT upcoming project, Tracka.
Part of my work as the ambassador for Nigeria and Team Lead for BudgIT was the investigation of Nigeria’s 2012 procurement data which showed great insights that Chinese contractors lead the list of vendors approved by Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council. Close to 34% of government contracts are directly linked to Chinese Corporations showing the shift of Nigerian government to award its large contracts to the Chinese.
A screenshot of the Open Lagos application which was an extension of the Openspending application.
I also led the team that built an interesting application from Openspending City Hackathon which was run globally. We focused on Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital and the application showed clear understanding of how the revenue, expenditure and deficit have increased over the years. The result of the hackathon was well used and we are pitching a to DFID-funded project through a local community group to make this sustainable.
At the 2013 Open Government Partnership in London, I was a speaker on the OKFN/ONE session which launched the Follow The Money campaign. In the blogpost on the Open Knowledge Foundation page, my speech was well captured as “Oluseun Onigbinde from BudgIT in Nigeria concurred that “Follow the Money” efforts should be driven by the needs of citizens, and should serve to amplify the voices and concerns of citizens so that governments listen and respond to them. He also suggested that “Follow the Money” network should have an institutional focus – working to identify, highlight and spread public policies which enable citizens to follow the money.”
Finally, on December 7, I organised a team in Lagos which focused on investigating the beneficial ownership and linkages within the Nigerian oil and gas industry. The primary event was held in Co-Creation Hub and was supported by Open Oil, School of Data and African Media Initiative. BudgIT, my startup will blow the final results into an infographic and share virally on its platforms.
I am an adherent of open data and how it guarantees development and expand qualitiative discussions. In 2014, as Nigeria moves closer to the elections, there will be more focus on deepening the quality of debate regarding governance and electoral reforms. As the Team Lead of BudgIT, OKFN and my startup collaborated on training BudgIT staff on the data management and use of the CKAN Open Data portal. This great collaboration was funded by the Indigo Trust. I was also happy to see Open Knowledge Foundation play a great role in launching the first subnational open data portal in Nigeria – Edo State Open Data Portal.
We can do more within by expanding Open Knowledge Community in Nigeria, the most populous black nation on earth. See you in 2014. In my next post, I will tell you my detailed plans. I appreciate support for Gavin, Stefan, Lucy, Anders, Zara and all the amazing people in OKFN who worked with me on various projects.
For more information and support on expanding OKFN work in Nigeria, kindly reach me on oluseun@yourbudgit.com or join Nigeria’s OKFN mailing list.
Ttyl.