Moses Motoni, a Project Tracking Officer of BudgIT, a Nigerian budget monitoring startup funded by Omidyar Network among others has been arrested in Kaduna State, Nigeria for his work related activities.
Mr. Motoni had been under watch of Senator Mohamed Sani, of Niger South Senatorial District in Niger State for tracking corruption in in Bida, Niger State.
Founded in 2011, BudgIT is a civic organization that applies technology to intersect citizen engagement with institutional improvement, to facilitate societal change. A pioneer in the field of social advocacy melded with technology, BudgIT uses an array of tech tools to simplify the budget and matters of public spending for citizens, with the primary aim of raising standard of transparency and accountability in government.
BudgIT is in constant partnership with civil society, public institutions and the media, chiefly in the areas of fiscal analyses, civic technology and data representation to creatively represent data and empower citizens to use the resulting information in demanding improved service delivery.
Beyond budget access, BudgIT functions on the premise that budgets must work for the people. In 2014, BuggIT launched Tracka its project-tracking tool which has been deployed in 17 States, and allows Nigerians post pictures of developmental projects in their communities, with BudgIT’s project officers aiding citizens offline to communicate with their elected representatives, and demand completion of the government projects in their neighbourhoods.
So far, BudgIT had been able to reach over 750,000 Nigerians via digital and physical spaces, leading online and offline conversations on government finance and public sector efficiency.
