Raising Community Champions
A journey across Nigeria
It has become increasingly important to continue to tell our stories, otherwise, the good deeds we embark upon are just lost in the whole narrative of events. A proverb rightly said, “until lions start telling their tales, the hunter will always be the hero”
In the early hours of today, my cellular phone rang and when I picked it up, I heard the brisk voice of a young man-my caller. Eagerly, he said, “I am part of the local champions you trained in Abuja”. Although I disapprove of his contextual use of the word “Local champion” in my mind, my face wore a big inconcealable smile because I knew immediately he is one of the volunteers we trained weeks ago under the campaign “Community Champion Initiative” organized by BudgIT Foundation, wherein participants were codenamed “Community Champions”. Albeit, the most important thing was the self-recognition of himself as a Champion.
Just as the name implies, a Community Champion is a Champion of social change through community-driven initiatives. He/she understands that to get the right community they want, certain people need to take on some responsibilities to drive the change they want to see and also help bridge some of the gaps an average Nigerian knows exists, however, just does not know how to bridge the gap. I guess this is why the people in their immediate environment just call them “local champions”
It is not out of place to make a quick reference to the “Tracka program” of BudgIT. Basically, it’s a program that helps track service delivery, constituency projects and hold town hall meetings to educate people living in different constituencies across the country. All these actions mentioned help to hold government/ elected officials to account. Citizens through this initiative are equipped with the right information to ask questions and demand how their resources are being managed. At the moment, we have representatives across 34 states in Nigeria. It became increasingly important to start having eyes and ears in these communities who speak the same language community and understand the ideologies of each community to sustain the message and its call to actions even in the absence of Tracka officers, this gave birth to the community champion initiative. It’s a proven fact time and time again that some politicians/elected officials are so devious to the extent that they make it very impossible for the people they represent to access new information as they know this might probably strip them of their perceived social/political capital, so they are bent on keeping the people ignorant. An average Nigerian politician is aware that when people are ignorant, then everything he does is perceived as a favour to the people. I don’t want to delve into details of how elected representatives turn government properties into personal properties, however,
What comes to mind at this time is the story of a particular House of representatives’ member who converted a community hall to his own personal property and named it after his mother… our intervention made that action reversible, well, that didn’t happen without the involvement of our Tracka Officer and vibrant “local Champions” in the community.
These “local champions” in these communities are the people we have decided to raise as “Community Champions”. To onboard them on the BudgIT platform, we see it as an important task to train volunteers on the knowledge they need to have, the organisation’s values and mission, and how the program is going to operate.
My role in this spanned the duration of the past two weeks when I and some members of my team went around the South-South, South West and North Central regions of Nigeria to train community champions who have volunteered to be part of the BudgIT team. In all, we have trained 86 volunteers so far and we are committed to training volunteers more before the year runs out.
Why are we following this course of action?
We can’t have too many players when it comes to the demand for transparency and accountability from the government. In fact, all citizens should not just carry the tag citizens, everyone should be an active citizen. When training new folks, I like to draw a circle, I always explain to them, I call it a circle which every normal governance is supposed to take after (Elections, citizens asking questions, standing your ground to get the answers by using all tools within tech and also what the legal framework which has been provided, then, use that to determine the values to vote for and understand the value of your vote as a citizen then you proceed to vote again) I say it all the time, “elections have consequences” and as we like to say it now, “it’s breakfast, everyone will get served” you can decide to expand that statement to mean, a citizen can decide not to participate in elections or governance, however, you can’t insulate yourself from the consequences of bad governance. I like to use Nigeria as an example, what we are experiencing today as a country fits very well into the perspective of all sectors of the country suffering from BAD GOVERNANCE. Therefore, it becomes very expedient at this time in history for you and me to be community champions in our immediate local governments and stand as advocates to demand good governance for the sake of our children’s future.
How do we intend to sustain the program?
Taking a clue from the most commonly-asked questions; “how do you intend to keep these people motivated?”, “how do you intend to keep track of them?”, “how do you ensure they don’t go out of line or do something against the value system of the organization, well, all these and many more all points at sustainability?”. The organization has a well-structured plan which helps to put all of these into consideration. We have done it with the Tracka program who we have present in 34 states in the country and we have connected community champions to work close to the Tracka officers. We have built a bridge with the community champions to connect the people to our Tracker officers, so as long as we continue to get support to keep the tracking officers program alive, automatically, the community champions program will continue to grow in leaps. In the next two years, we are projected to have at least 5000 community champions across the country. Do you want to be a champion in your community? you can always get information with me@yourbudgit.com
What have we learnt so far?
The lessons are numerous, the energy in the room while training these volunteers is so contagious! They want the change to happen in a twinkle of an eye. However, we have learnt that we need to keep pessimism in our face and optimism in our hearts, this is important as not to grow weary early. We have also learnt that these volunteers are ready to induct into their school of knowledge their immediate environment as they believe this will help them have an army of volunteers who believe in the same vision and share the same mission.
Theory of change
We believe that in five years we would have contributed to building over five million Nigerians who are Active Citizens. At this rate, if we still want to have a country to call ours, we need everyone to know about Civic Education, this is because the same single vote a Professor has is the same single vote a 200 level student in the university has. We need to collectively make great choices to get the dividends of democracy. Also, we hope to change the notion of people who feel they are included in the political process, I believe this line of thought always emanates from people who are ignorant of the power they have as Citizens, I believe civic education will go a long way to liberate the hearts of Nigerian citizens and we no longer see citizens apathy to governance.
Next line of action?
As an individual and also a member of a great team, I plan to continuously use my platform to educate Nigerians, without knowledge we can be fast, however, in the wrong direction. All Nigerians must also know that “without accountability, we can’t have a functioning democracy”
