Shin Kun Sheda

A Podcast/Radio Series Empowering Northern Nigerian Citizens on How to Hold Leaders Accountable

The principles of – accountability, transparency, participation and inclusion – have over the years become nearly universal guiding features of democracy, policy making and good governance. More particularly, transparency and accountability as they constitute the best tools for checkmating government’s actions and a panacea for sustainable democracy in Nigeria. When people talk about governance, they lay considerable emphasis on transparency and accountability, and clearly, there is no gainsaying that these are not attainable unless citizens participate in governance processes and demand for them. But among the problems discouraging effective citizen’s participation in governance is lack of trust; culminated through difficulty in accessing credible governance information especially that in relevance to public financials, and also shortage of effective advocacy tools for citizens to use to influence government policies.

Since 2015 the Nigerian Government – Northern states in particular has done better on opening information and in partnership with civil society organisations and citizens to encourage citizens participation and inclusion in decision making and policy implementation, categorically the signing in to the Open Government Partnership treaty among other internal open data, accountability and transparency policies by some states. But much of these information’s, opportunities and data are circulated through the internet especially twitter and government websites in English and bulky datasets making them hard to reach and understand to the common/local citizen and we believe Information becomes powerful only if it is accessed, discussed and used to influence leaders’ decisions for good by the majority, not the privileged alone.

We then created a A 5-Minutes(max) podcast/radio show- due to shrinking attentiveness time, with a mobilising tone similar to the ancient town criers in a simplified Hausa language, disseminating credible governance financial information like budget, debt analysis, procurement information, sector performance, federal allocation, Internally generated revenue analysis among other financial information, so as to be accessed for public dialogue and debate; stimulating grassroots actions in holding leaders accountable and ultimately, serving as an advocacy tool for amplifying the voices of the citizens to influence government policies for good.

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You can download the Audio episodes on SoundCloud and Anchor FM and Video episodes on YouTube