Who We are and why

In Nigeria, the fight against corruption and ineffective service delivery from the government is receiving increased attention and innovative ideas, especially in the open data advocacy space.

UDEME is a social accountability platform designed to hold the Nigerian government accountable for funds released for developmental projects. These projects usually are classified under capital, constituency and ecological projects and make up about 40% of Nigeria's annual budgets. To ascertain how these funds are spent, UDEME entails in-depth fieldwork through physical examination of projects and dissemination of generated information to the public space for citizens' awareness.

UDEME was established in 2018 by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), formerly the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ). The Platform (www.udeme.africa) was launched on February 20th, 2018 - a repository of capital and constituency projects allocation from 2015 till date.

The main goals of the project are:

• To demand greater accountability from the executives and legislatures in the financial and capital projects management of the National and state budgets.
• To develop civic technology that enables citizens and the media to track, investigate and report any form of corruption in the procurement process and the implementation of capital allocation projects in the past and present national and state budgets.

U-Monitors are selected student journalists who work as ground trotters on the UDEME project to amplify the activities of the government at the grassroots level. U-Monitors provide a significant impact on the work we do on UDEME as they contribute to eradicating citizen apathy in Nigeria and strengthening social accountability.

CJID created this program to boost the capacity and skills of campus trackers on grassroots engagements, by empowering them with the requisite information to disseminate to citizens. Since 2020 when the first phase was launched, we have deployed 84 U-Monitors who have gone on to pursue their careers in various fields.

The duties of a U-Monitor are:

• Project tracking and reporting
• Create relationships with community members and government MDAs
• Citizen engagement eg semi townhalls, GetInvolved Week, media appearance (where necessary) etc
• Advocate for good governance through social media, news reports, etc