BudgIT, a a start-up that provides Nigerian citizens with access to public budgets, has launched CivicHive in a bid to create an intersection between the citizens and the government.
The new initiative is expected to close assessed gap in access and dissemination of information and make citizens much more active in governance.
The Lead Partner at BudgIT, Oluseun Onigbinde, at the launch in Lagos, said: “Civic Hive is part of the five-year plan for BudgIT to make the governance more open with more tech solutions. With this effort the program, has placed four resilient youths on a six month fellowship to help them actualise their dreams”.
The CivicHive Fellows, who will be selected and groomed under the platform, are subsequently expected to form a pool of talented civic professionals equipped to creatively boost the standard of governance with their solutions, and by extension, the society.
Oluseun also noted civic engagement plays an important role in the work BudgIT does, amplifying campaigns and reaching intended audience.
He indicated that fellowship is a way of building the capacity of people with transformational ideas to do more, and solidifying our partnership with the society at large’.
Acoording to BudgIT, the philosophy of CivicHive is to create a nest to habour and build active citizens, taking them through curricula with the capability to initiate, articulate and maintain conversations on demanding effective governance. This is also a space to blend civic innovation with various facets of governance.
Already, Civic Hive currently has four fellows who are working on different thematic areas that improve civic engagement.
The first, Amplify, led by Dotun Olatoke, is a civic tech initiative that seeks to raise the voices of the forgotten people of Nigeria and generate support for underserved communities.
Through digital tools and platforms (website, social media), issues affecting people in these communities and the plight of the forgotten will be spotlighted and given adequate coverage, with the goal of generating awareness capable of motivating government and active citizens to support for sustainable interventions.
The second is Locate, a platform under Robert Ogbogu, that helps to track missing persons easily in Nigeria, which he said: “People gets missing every minute in Lagos alone and every first four hours matter to locating the individual” with the rise of this platform missing people will reduce drastically.
Nelson Olanipekun runs the third, Gavel, a platform that seeks to bring transparency to the justice sector in Nigeria, as the platform will present citizens more access to the justice system and be able to take action at all times.
In his word: “Gavel is building a justice clock that will track all court cases that are initiated by the masses”.
