With the project called Building Inclusion in Nigeria’s Open Government Partnership, Accountability Lab and its partners want to improve responsiveness and accountability of governance through the Open Government Partnership (OGP), particularly the gender and inclusion commitment in the Nigerian 2^nd National Action plan (2019 – 2021). They are working with Open Government Partnership Nigeria to ensure meaningful participation of young people, women and persons with disabilities in governance processes across the country. They believe that the OGP co-creation process- in conjunction with their CivActs work- can better ensure equity and inclusion, which will strengthen Nigeria over time. This project builds on ALAB’s Civic Action teams (CivActs) project to ensure the voices of communities (women, youth, people with disabilities, and ethnic minority/ Indigenous groups, etc.) are heard on accountability issues. CivActs is keen on collecing critical information from communities to solve daily problems for marginalised citizens, close the loop on challenges, and create tools that strengthen communities’ ability to self-advocate A case study for the OGP engagement in this project is the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI). The extractive industry is the only major revenue generating sector in Nigeria, thus Nigeria’s common wealth relies heavily on this sector. To ensure equal distribution of Nigerian common wealth, this project has therefore decided to focus on NEITI. To achieve this, they have proposed this overall goal: ‘To equip communities, and marginalised groups in particular, who are affected by a lack of accountability in the extractives sector with useful citizen-generated data for self-advocacy, and disseminate accurate information to engage a broad audience, and create multi-stakeholder spaces that foster trust-building and solutions-driven dialogue’ With these 2 objectives to guide them in achieving the goal:

• To empower marginalised groups through multi-stakeholder dialogues and townhall engagements with public officials in 3 OGP states (Imo, Delta, and Edo) and generate constant feedback to government officials and concerned companies to meet obligations to the communities
• Increase meaningful participation and strengthen the voice of young people, women and other persons with disabilities in governance processes by providing simplified and inclusive information around open governance (such as fiscal transparency e.g. NEITI 2017 Audit Report, etc.) through street vibes, music, infographics and monthly tweet chats.

They are also looking at 2 broad activity areas to enable them achieve these objectives; Activity I: Sensitising communities and generating dialogue on transparency in communities affected by extraction, and enabling citizens to participate in decision-making processes. Under this activity line, they will be taking the following :

• Training local community members on inclusion, fiscal transparency & community advocacy,
• Approval, implementation and collective monitoring of agreements and obligations around the NEITI report recommendations as it affects their communities.
• Mobilisation of local journalists as information channels to collect information through their work and disseminating through their media outlets, tapping into their local networks and relationships with government and local businesses to push for reforms.
• Citizen-generated data using KoboToolbox (an open data information collection app that facilitates real-time data synthesis), to understand the key priorities for excluded citizens and provide a shared set of perspectives and information that can be used as a basis for discussion as part of multi-stakeholder dialogues
• Multi-stakeholder dialogues: through radio talk shows and town hall meetings with community members, power holders and relevant government officials.
• Contextualised outreach–  infographics in pidgin English, monthly tweetchats, radio jingles with simple catchy messages and information played on local community radio to reach a broad cross-section of community members.

Activity II: Outreach and Engagement The activity translates the NEITI report content in creative ways using film, music and infographics to help young people and marginalised groups understand it better. Thus this activity line is looking at Music campaigns and a film festival.  

Promoting inclusion in Open Government processes in Nigeria 

Despite the decades of efforts to achieve equality and inclusion of vulnerable groups, women, persons with disabilities, and young people in Nigeria remain underrepresented in socio-economic development and governance processes at the grassroots. With the passage of the Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) (Prohibition) Act 2018, there was hope that this milestone achievement would further abate the dehumanising challenges PWDs face and establish an institutional framework to protect them. 

Accountability Lab (ALAB) Nigeria is a social lab that is committed to ensuring accountable, transparent & open governance processes in Nigeria. In 2018, when Voice Nigeria had her first context update, one significant feedback from the exercise was the low level of citizens’ engagement (particularly women, youths & people with disability) in governance processes and this prompted a sudden opportunity call for proposal in 2019. The work, expertise and influence of ALAB was apt for this call because of the precedence they have set in Nigeria, but more importantly because of the Civic-Act tools they developed to facilitate active and meaningful engagement of 3 rightsholders of Voice- Women, Youths & People with Disability (PWD), in governance.  

The CivicActs process is predicated on co-creation, design, and implementation with rightsholders (women, young people, and persons with disabilities). The model is predicated on a 5-step process: first, listening to these communities to deeply understand their needs and priorities. Second, data collection with the communities through high-touch surveys. Then there is work with decision-makers and the excluded communities to support activities around the identified problems, from advocacy for policy changes to concrete problem-solving for citizens. This process closes the loop on the critical issues that rightsholders face on an everyday basis. 

Under the project- Building Inclusion in Nigeria Open Government Partnership, ALAB engaged in many capacity building exercises for the 3 rightsholder groups including on advocacy, leadership, community project monitoring and civic engagement. The main impact of the project was increased boldness, skills and confidence by the rightsholders. This was achieved through the trainings and with this; the disability community engaged under the project were able to participate actively in the legislative advocacy process that ensured passage of the Discrimination against Persons with Disability (Prohibition) Law in Kaduna State. Thus, rightsholders share in this credit because of their role, which was only possible due to the advocacy and public engagement skills they received under the project. 

Following a series of multi-stakeholder engagements and advocacy with the relevant government agencies and other stakeholders on prioritising the inclusion of marginalized groups in governance processes, the Governor has assented to the Disability Bill, which is now an Act in Kaduna State. The Act provided for a Trust Fund into which the 2% percentage of business profits in Kaduna could be paid. The Act also made provision for the employment of PWDs in the service of Kaduna state. 

Apart from passage of Disability Law in Kaduna State, the project has also ignited the interest of citizens on open government processes and the need to get involved. As a result, there have been pockets of activities and engagements happening between citizens and government agencies in Kaduna and Imo States, to ensure that all voices count in decisions made by the government in these States.   

ALAB believes that passage of the Disability Law is a great milestone as it sets the right framework for inclusion of the disability community, however notes that it also means more efforts is needed as implementation is also critical. They would like to see all 36 States of Nigeria domesticate/adopt the Law and ensure full implementation because it is only through implementation that inclusive practices can be assured.  

Some of the key lessons include the fact that how we manage and engage with local stakeholders largely determines the project outcomes. It is important to understand how cultural beliefs and practices constantly  deepens or weakens inclusion with a view to finding appropriate measures for deflecting such beliefs and practices. Cultural beliefs and practices constantly precluded people from understanding the inclusion of rights holders. It was also evident that the needs of rightsholders are not homogenous. We need to take time and engage with them to gain a good understanding of their needs and priorities.