By Hamza Ibrahim Chinade.

After holding Content Charter for People Living with Disability (PWDs) and Communities Experience Sharing Workshops, the Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) which implements a Department for International Development (DIFD) supported project “Strengthening Civic Engagement with the Electoral Process SCEEP through ActionAid Nigeria, the organization convenes another engagement titled “Inter-Party Youths Dialogue” with a view to exploring youths participation in politics in Nigeria, their challenges as well as opportunities.

Stating the objectives of the programme, Malam Isah Garba maintained that the composition of the dialogue is mainly drawn in order to ensure fair play among the participants and deliberate important concerns around youths participation in politics in Nigeria and eventually set a pace for youths, women and people with special needs inclusion in politics as that will not only promote good governance but also end discrimination and marginalization of certain groups in the society.

In his presentation titled “CITAD/AAN Experience in 2015 General elections in Nigeria and Youths: Key Findings”, coordinator of SCEEP project, Malam Isyaku Garba treated many concepts and highlighted activities in the recent election, significance of such activities and how they can serve as case studies to salvaging the future of especially youths in Nigerian politics.

Also presenting on “Youths and Politics in Nigeria”, Kabiru Sa’idu Dakata emphasized on political participation, definition of youths by age, variation of youths definition in different countries, youths percentage in terms of voting, population of youths in federal and state cabinets, legislatures and constitutional provision for youths participation in Nigerian polity. Kabiru observed that reviews need to be made regarding age limit for contesting for electoral offices and the youths themselves ought to be responsible enough to accept what is right and reject what is not lawfully, he added that the ere of giving youths money to vote certain candidates or youths carrying weapons during campaigns must stop if they want to really reshape their status in the country.

In their separate goodwill messages, Director of Kano state Directorate for Youths Development, representative of Commissioner, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Director, National Orientation Agency (NOA) all appealed to youths to be patriotic, committed and determined especially in politics saying that will help strengthen the polity in general. Some of the challenges noted at the dialogue included: lack of resources or financial constraints, god fatherism, lack of political mentorship from the past leaders or prominent society elites, constitutional restriction, cultural and parental restrictions, social stereotype, lack of adherence to party regulations, partiality of security agents during elections, poor leadership in political parties, neglect of youths in party affairs, lack of integrity and foresight by the youths, lack of leadership capacity and skills by the youths etc.

Recommendations were specifically made to INEC, political parties and the youths. Some of the recommendations to made to INEC were the need to review age limit law to allow more youths participation in election, allow and encourage independent candidates system, and scrap payment for expression of interest which the participants agreed stops youths candidates with little or no resources to run for political offices. Participants also recommended that political parties should eliminate delegate system and replace with option A4 i.e majority carry the votes, abolish god fatherism practice and let competency champion the cause nominating candidates and support and encourage women and people living with disability (PWDs) candidacy. On youths, the participants urged them and well meaning individuals to patriotically join politics and salvage their future, they also should identify political parties with real values and join them and the constitution needs to be amended to allow for more youths participation in politics

A communiqué was jointly issued by the participants at the end of the dialogue. The Inter-Party Youths Dialogue was attended by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), National Orientation Agency (NOA), Kano state Directorate of Youths Development, different political parties, civil society organizations (CSOs), students of tertiary institutions, SCEEP communities, people with special needs, women groups, the media etc.

The internet intrigues everyone. So much so that, in 2014, two Western think tanks, Chatham House in London and the Ontario, Canada based Centre for International Governance Innovation, (CIGI) set up the Global Commission on Internet Governance. The task was to explore how to preserve a single worldwide web, (romantically renamed worldwide wonderland). The two went on to put Prof Joseph Nye to the task. You can call people such as Professor Nye, John Ikenberry, Robert Keohane and all other members of that club conservative scholars but they are some of the most established political scientists in the Western world and most influential on a global scale. Obviously finding the concept of Hegemony too radical or smelling of Socialism, for example, Prof Nye, a special student of power, has basically created the concept of ‘soft power’ to replace it. Today, even the radicals are using soft power without much suspicion. It has become naturalised as a term by which we think of power as built up consent rather than coercion. But ‘soft power’ is not less ‘dangerous’ than Hegemony. It says much about how scholars in that circle set the standards.

However, when Nye went to work, he came out with a neither here nor there kind of position as far as the hard headed realist he has been. Instead of an analysis corresponding to that theoretical standpoint, Nye’s report was speaking in theoretical tongues, relying on scholarly dexterity to argue what he called a ‘Regime Complex’ – “loosely coupled norms and institutions that ranks somewhere between integrated institutions that imposes regulation through hierarchical rule and highly fragmented practices and institutions with no identifiable core and non- existent linkages”. It was a classic evidence of the incomprehensibility of the phenomenon called the internet to even some of the most regarded contemporary thinkers.

The world has found challenging the multiplicity of tasks the internet alone can accomplish, the technological complexity, the horde of actors it invites and accommodates, the security debacle it has invented, the ideological quarrels it has brought about, the problem of dealing with the United States, until recently, the elephant in the internet governance room, the digital divide corresponding to the North-South dichotomy, the gender question in internet access and the internet’s share of the ‘tragedy of the commons’.

It was against this background that the recent invitation to a ‘Civil Society Consultative Forum on Internet Code of Practice for Nigeria’ was received with excitement as well as apprehension in many quarters across Nigeria. Excitement because it gave a critical stakeholder such as the civil society opportunity to generate and make the sort of input that expands its own space in a process involving the consolidation of the internet. Two, it is an entirely Nigerian government initiative through its telecommunications regulator – the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). The apprehension was/is how the civil society of even the giant of Africa might penetrate the ocean called the internet in terms of something for everyone. This is in the light of the great power politics around the internet, especially the threat of balkanization and the frightening argument that such states have a fall back in the principle of substitutability, coercion and delegation by which they can always have their way.

June 8^th, 2017 came and it was a full house full of surprises. The first surprise came from the way the Centre for Information Technology and Development, (CITAD) coordinating the input making process managed to assemble people versatile in the issues involved. The second surprise was how nearly everyone was keen to push a position, clarify something or offer an alternative, from the beginning to the end of the meeting.  The third surprise is how far gender consciousness has gone in the discourses of internet governance in Nigeria. If that measures the level of gender consciousness across other social arena in Nigeria, then the gender revolution would take place before we know it. The last shocker is how an audience of predominantly Abuja based potential middle class elements could be so insistent on extension of internet facilities to the rural areas.

Called by Alhaji Yakubu Aliyu, the Abuja based Development Policy expert who chaired the occasion to make an opening remark, Mallam Yunusa Y’au, the Executive Director of CITAD, located the essence of the day in NCC’s call for inputs for an internet code of practice for the country. So, the consultative forum differs slightly from the typical civil society engagement. Unlike the governance issues the civil society is more used to, this is about procedures and guidelines on how people could access and use the net.

It may look innocuous but caution is required, he said, pointing out how the internet has become a guarantor of other rights such as right to Freedom of Information, right to education and so on. It is for this reason that there is a gradual move to make internet access a right but the move is constrained by issues of access, affordability, infrastructure, appropriateness of platform and the case of special audiences such as the disabled. The civil society might, therefore, want to think about which guidelines and procedures would guarantee inclusivity, respond to gender violence online and the tendency of national governments to isolate negative impacts of the internet and seek to assert control, among others.

Prof Dada at a previous outing

Professor John Dada was the first of the three resource persons whose intervention were to provide the background to the input process. He turned out a fascinating presenter with great deal of raw data. Surprisingly, he is not based in any jet set urban centre but Kafanchan. He is of the APC but not the party in power in Nigeria. His is the Association of Progressive Communications, (APC) that works through research, advocacy, networking, communication and outreach.

There is a sense in which three of the greatest points he made might be the following. Regulation is running behind the internet itself. Always several steps behind the internet dynamics because of lack of internet governance training rather than wickedness, governments are found reacting out of panic or in ignorance. In his analysis, they need internet governance training. The way he presented it is such that most senators and members of the House of Representatives would flock to internet governance schools because it would help make them resolve their crisis of relevance in their communities by being able to do much more at very little or no cost at all.

Second is his point about the relative lack of awareness of the potentials of the internet in Nigeria, especially when compared to Latin American countries. The third is the emancipatory dimension of his politics of the internet: making it available for everyone is not a big deal.

One question put to Prof Dada and which remained dominant throughout the rest of the day was: who pays for the cost of taking internet to the rural areas. He’s got an answer: it is not a big deal either. One, there is a service provision fund to cushion transnational corporations going to such places considered to be uneconomical in profit terms either because they are sparsely populated or hard to reach. Right now, Nigeria has billions untouched in the said fund. Somebody made a cynical remark that the money must still be there only because Nigeria’s Finance Minister is unaware or it would have been withdrawn and used for something else. It gave an insight to how little is the faith in government in Nigeria.

Dada’s second means for taking internet to the rural areas is the community network. All the government has to do is provide the backbone because the community provides the content and the infrastructure. Dada would add that whatever is considered as problems in taking the internet to the rural areas have been confronted and resolved one way or the other elsewhere such as in India, Argentina, Peru among others.

The rural areas are where the internet must go, he says. His reason is that these are where the real Nigerians are based, with rich oral and visual culture which the internet is the best place to spread them. There is now solar operated computer, making lack of electricity nearly a non-issue. A Yoruba keyboard is already developed and is on the way for other cultural groups. With that, illiteracy as a constraint on taking internet to the rural areas is off. This, he said, is why illiterates in Japan or China didn’t have to become literate before they could get into the world of the internet. What is missing, as far as he is concerned, is a powerful enough advocacy for rural internet provisioning. Once that comes on board, the awareness would be created and the idea would catch on.

What about a sort of a Nigerian thinking on the security debacle that comes along with the very nature of the internet – it can secure just as it can be a conveyor belt for insecurity. Yet, civil society is sensitive to government trying to control it even as we want to be safe from terrorists, cyber criminals and dirty dealers. Two responses greeted this question. First was the argument that government almost always over steps itself in trying to use security as an excuse. The example of the huge amount of money spent on surveillance equipment which was not even installed is cited. This propensity typical of government is something civil society is asked to watch out for, being the ears and eyes of the people. The second answer is the futility of government’s attempt to block or control content. They never make a success of it, it was pointed out. An example was given of the experience of three Nigerians who arrived an East African country where the government had shut down internet access – no face booking, no tweeting, no whataspping.

Unable to bear being cut off from the world, unable to inform families and friends about their safe arrival, the three Nigerians found themselves protesting to the hotel. The outcome was being taken to a hidden corner of the hotel where they found everyone using internet facilities through an alternative mechanism. The logic of the story was to show the difficulty of sustained blocking of access to the internet because people would always get round it. In any case, whatever you do on the internet is there and security can always trace it to you. Civil society does not frown at government doing security but frowns at using people’s indiscretion to blackmail people which is abuse of the intelligence profession. In other words, what is intelligence if government goes to tell your wife what you told your girlfriend? The hall did not explode in laughter but witnessed the kind of chuckling that signposts approval of the argument, especially when the speaker added the point about how many students first encounter the computer on the day they sit for the Computer Based Test in Nigeria even though the National Education Curriculum says Computer Studies is compulsory.

By Sagiru Ado Abubakar.

The Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has on Tuesday 6^th June, 2017 organized a one-day Experience Sharing Meeting with 18 SCEEP communities in Kano State with view to share experience and learning with regard to Community Development Charter (CDC) Engagement. The Community Development Charter (CDC) is an empowering document that gives communities an insight into the challenges they face as people. CITAD facilitated the publication of the Community Development Charter under Strengthening Citizen Engagement in the Electoral Process (SCEEP) project that has been implementing since 2014.The objective of the project is to promote election participation and good governance through public participation, mainstream citizens participation in election and good governance, to build the capacity of local CBOs, to mobilize citizens behind an evidence-based advocacy to participant in good governance, to monitor government expenditure, to build the capacity of the local communities to towards involvement of citizens in election and the governance of the local and state government.

In today’s event, the communities shared their valuable experiences and learning’s with fellow communities and stakeholders on the CDC engagement process. Earlier, CITAD/SCEEP had motivated the 18 SCEEP communities to hold meetings at the community level and discuss issues around the Community Development Charters. This helps the communities to generate issues that form discussion during the state level meeting in order to capture and share the communities experience and inspirational practice.

Malam Isyaku Garba made the opening remarks at the beginning of the meeting. He welcomed all and reminds the participants that since inception of this project CITAD/SCEEP carried out different activities ranging from voter education, election monitoring, village book meetings, advocacy trainings, budget literacy training etc all addressing constraints observed. Purpose of today’s meeting was clearly stated by Malam Ahmad Yakasai. Yakasai said that we have all your findings in written, but if CITAD has not invited you to this meeting no way we can learn from one another. This meeting enables us to know what strategies Dan Agundi in Kano Municipal Local Government for example used and achieve particular result so that community of Daura in Karaye Local Government should emulate.

Participants were grouped into six groups with strategy of three communities from each local government should form a group. Each group was asked to address the following questions:

1. What was the situation before our intervention?
2. Identify the changes in your community as a result of the CDC engagement
3. Which methods or tools did you use in getting the changes identified in question 1b.
4. What did you find most useful (step by step description can help here)
5. What do you think is the best way to engage our representatives, policy makers, government institutions etc
6. Mention challenges you face in participating in governance at local government level and state government level
7. How SCEEP has help you out in term of community organizing and participating in governance
8. What successes do you achieve and strategies you plan to ensure sustainability

5. What are the most valuable learning of the CDC experience
6. What initiative do you currently have as a result of SCEEP engagement or intends to carry out?
7. What kind of investment/ resources did individuals or communities make?
8. Identified CDC issues projects 2017 budget
9. Feedback on 321 code

After group presentations, fruitful information was generated from the participants. Finally, Malam Isyaku Garba said during the closing remarks that this information is going to be used to produce a qualitative work that can serve as an advocacy campaign tool that can be used at state level and for the future engagements. The event was attended by 54 participants from 18 #SCEEP communities in Kano State

The workshop was organized by Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) with support from ActionAid Nigeria to share the experiences in relation to the processes, conduct and participation of People With special Needs (PWDs) in the 2015 general election.

After introduction and background of the workshop by Training Coordinator Malam Ahmad Abdullahi Yakasai, the project Coordinator, Isyaku Garba presented the 1^st paper tilled “ActionAid experience in 2015 General Election in Nigeria and PWDs: Key Findings. The presentation flashed back to the military regime down to the democratic era in which processes of elections, number of political parties, contestants, role played by INEC, security agents, youths, women, challenges as well as developments in the previous elections were highlighted with particular attention to the PWDs.

The charter development consultant, chairman of the occasion and presenter of the 2^nd paper, Mal. Ibrahim Umar Abdulkarim led a 5 cluster groups of people with special needs in accordance to their challenges to answer certain questions in order to understand their real needs and challenges during elections. Some of the challenges identified included: lack of special arrangement for PWDs on election day, needs for voter cards and ballot papers on brail papers to guide the blinds, provision of special stands for albinos and lack of internal democracy in political parties to allow PWDs participation.

In his closing remarks, Malam Ahmad Abdullahi Yakasai commended the support receivied from ActionAid International Nigeria. He also appreciated the keen interest shown by the participants and extended CITAD gratitude to the Commissioner of Police, INEC representative, NOA, chairman of the occasion and entire individuals who have contributed to the success of the workshop.

The Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has on Thursday 18^th May, 2017 organized students forum on #OpenNASS Campaign. #OpenNASS campaign is an advocacy campaign aimed at tackling 3 fundamental issues. Specifically, the campaign aimed at tackling poor understanding of governance and the role of voters, few tools (discussion forums, petitions, town halls etc) available to the average voters and opacity in the use of public funds and policy choices. The campaign has been very active on social media and in the last year, has been amplified via infographs in nothing less than 6 newspapers like Daily Trust, This Day, Punch e.t.c and discussions / sensitization jingles on 8 radio stations across Nigeria. In her opening remarks, the program coordinator, Malama Harira Abdurrahaman Wakili, said that In Nigeria, there is a major disconnect between the elected representatives and the general voting population outside of the electoral process. This has seriously hampered the strength of democracy because officials make decisions and vote on issues with limited information from their constituents, and with little oversight from these same constituents. This problem is borne out of 3 fundamental issues:

• The average voter does not understand the governance system in Nigeria, and their role in keeping their government accountable.
• There are very few tools (petitions, open lines, discussion forums, etc.) available to the average voter to share information with elected representatives and hold them accountable.
• The national government is very opaque on its policy choices and use of public funds

In addressing ways to overcome the above mentioned problems, Hariara said that Nigerians have started writing and signing petitions for an #openNASS. The petition will put more pressure on the National Assembly to open up its activities. In view of this, CITAD observed that there is urgent need to spread the campaign across by organizing such event and in its different activities and network in order to have more hands to join the agitation.

In the paper he presented, Malam Hamza Ibrahim Chinade, CITAD’s Media Officer, said that the National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a bicameral legislature established under section 4 of the Nigerian Constitution. It consists of a Senate with 109 members and a 360-member House of Representatives. The body, modeled after the federal Congress of the United States is supposed to guarantee equal representation of the 36 states irrespective of size in the Senate and proportional representation of population in the House of Reps. He then gave the party composition of the senate as APC 60 and PDP 49, while the party composition of the House of Representative is APC 225, PDP 125 and others 10. He finally outlined the following as the major roles of the legislature in a democracy         i. Enactment of laws    ii. Appropriation of funds, and    iii. Oversight on implementation.

Mrs. Salma Muhammad led an interactive discussion on the role of students in promoting #openNASS. During the discussions, Ahmad Tijjani, a Political Science student from Bayero University, Kano encouraged the fellow students to include #openNASS campaign in the SUG activities in tertiary institutions in the state. “We will not allow the politicians to design the people needs in their offices and deny them access to useful information”. Ahmad Said. Idris Nuhu Congo from Gaya Local Governments urged CITAD to take the campaign to secondary schools in the state in order to catch our youth young. Ibrahim Abdullahi a community leader from Hotoron Kudu, requested CITAD to produce #openNASS campaign pamphlets in Hausa Language for easy understanding for their people.

Finally, Malam Isyaku Garba of CITAD shared information of the role of legislative aides of the elected representative and gave their contact phone numbers. The event was attended by about 60 participants.

By Hamza Ibrahim Chinade.

The Inspiring Leadership Reflection Interactive Series (ILERIS), a monthly youths mentorship and inspiration lecture usually organize by Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) is an experience sharing ground between successful people of different backgrounds and professions and staff, volunteers, interns of CITAD, peace club members of secondary schools, Students for Peace of Universities, Polytechnics, Colleges of Education, and members of Kano civil society and is meant to serve as a symposium that shapes the lives of the participants through learning from success, failure, challenge and obstacles of the invited guest speakers so that they succeed by imitating or developing style of handling failure, challenge or obstacle while exploring the secrets of success in their different endeavors. Every month, the organization invites a prolific guest to have an interaction with the participants, this month CITAD hosts Malam Salihu Lukman, the Director General of Progressive Governors Forum as the guest speaker.

Giving an opening remark, the Executive Director of the organization Dr. Yunusa Zakari Ya’u thanked the guest for gracing the event and advised the participants to listen to the guest with interest and attention in order to gain from his wealth of experience emphasizing that the objective of the interactive session is for the participants to directly learn one or two lessons that will inspire them to think about their dreams, think about aspiring to become successful people and to think about the strategies to adopt in order to also succeed.

In his presentation, the guest, Malam Salihu Lukman toured the participants into his vast profile beginning with his student days to unionism, activism, advocacy for social justice, human rights, and labour struggles while at the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and how he landed into politics, in all these endeavors Lukman highlighted problems, challenges as well as opportunities that he hinted sacrifice and commitment are the bedrock of excelling in everything one does. Lamenting on the unemployment issue, Lukman said “I have come to realize through my community work even the search for job many people don’t know how to approach it, it’s about packaging yourself through your CV, but what I found out is that many graduates don’t know how to write their CVs”, recalling his Textile Union days and pointing out the significance of sacrifice and commitment, the guest speaker noted “once you make an effort there will always be a reward and the reward can come from unfamiliar quarters”. Malam Salihu Lukman challenged the participants to explore their potentials saying potentials are noticed in people who wake up and make efforts. The lecture ended with a presentation of some publications of the Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) to the guest by Senior Programmes Officer, Kabiru Sa’idu Dakata.

By Hamza Ibrahim Chinade.

The Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD), an ICT focused organization that uses ICT to empower citizens on good governance, sustainable and balanced development has celebrated this year’s Girls in ICT Day and World Telecommunication and Information Society Day respectively, the 2017 Girls in ICT Day was earlier celebrated on 27^th April but CITAD could not hold the event on that day and therefore decided to observe the day with a capacity building workshop for ladies on 17^th May when World Telecommunication and Information Society Day is also commemorated globally.

International Girls in ICT Day is an opportunity for girls and young women to see and experience technology in a whole new light. The initiative, backed by all ITU Member States, aims to create a global environment that empowers and encourages girls and young women to consider careers in the growing field of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

There is an estimated shortfall of over two million skilled ICT professionals worldwide. Despite the obvious benefits, many girls never even consider a career in ICTs. At the same time, many companies are looking to increase the number of women in the sector. The ICT sector is a growing sector for employment in both developed and developing countries. This means that highly qualified women in technical fields around the world have significant opportunities available to them.

As for the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, it’s theme for 2017 is “Big Data for Big Impact,” and focuses on the power of Big Data for development and aims to explore how to turn imperfect, complex, often unstructured data into actionable information in a development context. The insight brought on by advanced analysis can strongly complement the evidence-based nature of decision-making that can be leveraged at national, regional and international levels to drive success towards attaining all 17 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030.

Earlier in his opening remarks, Training Coordinator of the Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) Malam Ibrahim Nuhu laments how access to ICTs remain a big challenge to women especially in developing countries and advised them not relent in their efforts to understand and utilize ICTs in their businesses and other purposes for societal development. Three presentations were taken apart from interactive session and comments and questions. Background on Girls in ICT/International Information Society Day by Harira Wakili, Role of ICT in Girls and Women Development by Kamal Umar Karaye as well as Digital Inclusion of Girls in ICT by Hajiya Amina Hanga, the Executive Director, Isa Wali Empowerment Initiative. The event ended with a group picture of the facilitators and the participants.

The Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) held the second round of an internet safety and security workshop series in March 2017. The workshop, held at the NISTF Hall, Kano, was attended by 55 people including journalists, civil society activists, teachers and leaders of students for peace clubs supported by CITAD in tertiary institutions. Explaining the objectives of the workshop, Abdulganiyyu Rufai, programmes associate at CITAD, said that it had become necessary to raise awareness about internet safety and security as many people were increasingly falling prey to cybercrime through identity and personality theft, while many had experienced terrible confidentiality breaches.

Cross-section of participants at the workshop

The workshop was conducted in three sessions. The first session, entitled University Internet Safety and Security, was facilitated by Y. Z. Ya’u, the executive director of CITAD. He started by noting that given that the internet had become an indispensable part of our daily life, it was only logical that we insist that governments must accord it a formal recognition as a right. As a right and tool that we use daily, we must be able to navigate the various perils that could put as at risk, he added.

He observed that often safety and security are confused because they are related, and some use them interchangeably, but as they have evolved, they are actually used differently.                                                                  Y. Z. Ya’u facilitating the first session

Internet security, he said, “refers to the protection of the internet as a system – its functions, its databases, etc.” Internet safety, on the other hand, relates to the protection of the individual users from harm. He sees insecurity itself as a threat to internet safety.

He then took the participants through the various points of perils, the consequences of safety and security breaches, as well as the various dimensions and manifestations of insecurity online. The session also drew attention to privacy issues, including the right to forget and the possible implications of the Internet of Things to privacy, and concluded by looking at emerging issues such as zero rating and net neutrality. He pointed out that Nigeria has no position on zero rating, which some mobile companies are currently providing, and activists needed to respond to this emerging “digital apartheid”.

The second session, on managing cybersecurity and privacy issues, was led by Abdulganiyu Rufai, who explained some common threats and their consequences, such as viruses, spyware, etc. He looked at different types of attacks on networks and their countermeasures. He said such attacks were usually aimed at affecting either one or a combination of confidentiality, authenticity, integrity and system availability. He discussed how these attacks can occur, including interruption, which affects availability; interception, which undermines confidentiality of transactions; modification, which leads to lack of system integrity; and fabrication, which attacks system authenticity.

He concluded by imploring participants to implement seven cybersafety procedures that will “protect yourself, others, and your computer from many common threats.” These seven safety measures include regularly updating software, running anti-virus always, taking precautions to avoid identity theft, and turning on personal firewalls. The others were avoiding spyware/adware, protecting passwords, and backing up important files.

In the final session, Kamal Umar, technical officer at CITAD, demonstrated various tips on how to surf the internet safely. Talking on the topic of “General Online Safety Tips”, Umar started by drawing the attention of participants to the fact that learning to browse privately, a special feature of most browsers, was the foundation of safety online. He demonstrated how this can be done.

Another view of participants with Abdulganiyu Rufai facilitating

He also explained the various security features of the browsers which users needed to pay attention to. He advised on installing add-ons that can steer you away from threats, and took participants through steps that help in protecting systems while downloading documents online.

He also discussed key safety and security assurance features that those doing online shopping should look for. For example, he drew attention to the difference between the Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS) and the regular Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as something to look for. He said it was also important to look at the website’s Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate, which is like a digital ID card that tells you that the website or web page is genuine.

He reinforced some of the safety measures discussed earlier, such as taking precautions for protecting your computer or mobile device, not conducting overly private activities when using public Wi-Fi, not allowing other people to use your computer/mobile phone, and making sure you format or delete computer/mobile phone content before selling a device or giving it away as a gift. He also gave tips on how to stay safe on social media sites.

At the end of the questions and answers session, a participant recommended that CITAD should mainstream internet safety and security in its regular training programmes. Responding, the training coordinator of CITAD, Malam Ahmad A. Yakasai, said that the suggestion was taken and that CITAD would look into how to implement it.

The following round of the workshop on internet safety and security was held in April for government officials. The first workshop in the series, which was meant for CITAD staff and associates, was held on 21 January 2017.

By Akpeji Charles.

The need for stakeholders in Nigeria to work together to combat the generation and spread of hate and dangerous speech in the country, have become a source of concern to the leadership of Centre for Information Technology and Development
The leadership of the organization who recently engaged different ethnic groups, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), students and youths on a public sensitization on Hate and Dangerously Speech in Jalingo, the state capital of Taraba, observed that ” the convergence of ethnicity-based and religious hate speech is an explosive mix for the country.”
In his presentation, the Senior Progaammes Officer- Peace and Conflict Management of the International organization, Isah Garba, noticed that religious and ethnicity constitute ” more then 80% of the hate and dangerous speech in Nigeria.”
Citing the 1994 Rwanda genocide which according to him was necessitated by dangerous speech, he noticed that that there is ” increasing circulation of fake materials such as pictures, news etc which are meant to create confusion.”
Pointing out that ” much of the hate speech arises from perceptions associated with the action or inaction of government” the organization further observed that there is ” increasing circulation off fake materials such as pictures, news etc which are meant to create confusion.”
Garba who further expressed dismay at the way and manner people indulge in the acts of exploring all available avenues using social media to create confusion in the country, beckoned at such persons to seek for an alternative ways that would promote peace in the country.
According to the organization “the Facebook in particular appears to be a place for the cooking and spread of fake and false news with pictures taken years back or in other countries circulating as authentication of the manufactured tales.”
He beckoned at the government to always endeavour to step efforts in promoting ” inclusive dialogue with a view to arriving at national consensus on national issues” adding that government should promote ” transparency and openness in the conduct of government and its officials so that citizens are carried along.”
Also contributing, the Research and Communication Assistant of CITAD, Hamza Ibrahim Chinade, want media practitioners to ” join the campaign against hate speech by providing space to counter hate and dangerous speech” adding that journalists should refrain from “providing space for the promotion of hate and dangerous speech by others.”
He also enjoined all media regulatory agencies and organizations especially the NBC, press council, Guild of editors, NUJ among others to proactively monitor the media and ensure that ” those found spreading hate and dangerous speech are appropriately sanctioned.”

Participants at the event vowed to tread legitimate paths to put and end to speeches that often ignite upheavals especially in the forthcoming general polls slated for 2019.

By Adagbo Onoja.

As the Coordinator of the “National Conference on Community Resilience to Boko Haram Insurgency”, Professor Jibrin Ibrahim must have developed a certain intellectual intimacy with the data and dynamics of resilience as to be sensitive to bringing all angles to it and avoid a celebratory discourse of the concept. This is the sort of conclusion one is compelled to reach from listening to him and from reading his last synthesis of the research project he superintended, (See “The Resilience of Nigerians”, Daily Trust, May 12^th, 2017). As one of the most formidable social scientists in Nigeria today; as one with ex-students spread all over the place; as a columnist and with the prospects of him presiding over the final write-up of the research report, his current engagement with resilience represents a frightening development. It cannot be less in the light of the claim, and belief even, for instance, that Ulrich Beck’s World Risk Society argument is the real paradigm which grounded most recent security practices, particularly in counter-terrorism and Homeland Security. The implication is that Jibo (as he is more popularly known) could end up writing security but from an indigestible mix of subdued nationalism and ‘compassionate’ neoliberalism. It is thus considered important to attempt to tame this temptation before he ends up singing a reality into being through discourse but a reality that would be incongruent with the shared vision of Nigeria that has remained unifying for most activists of the 1980s to date.

Even if taken at the level of the headline alone, Jibo’s column says a lot about his conception of resilience: it is there, the research discovered it and here we are. In other words, Jibo argues that Nigerians have sufficient adaptive skills, inherent in them or acquired in the face of threats. He lists them and the constraints that inhibited their full flight in the confrontation with Boko Haram in the north east. In doing so in the piece, Jibo did not notice when he slipped from analysis to propaganda at the point he wrote of the “remarkable capacity of the people to develop resilience and move on with their lives in spite of adversity”. It is a claim he took seriously enough as to try to bring it down to earth in the assertion towards the end of the piece about how more devastating Boko Haram would have been but for the exploitation of local initiatives in resilience.

The first problem with this representation of the dynamics of resilience to Boko Haram is the applicability of the idea of communities that have moved on or out of entrapment in the assemblage of trauma that Boko Haram has occasioned in the north east region and Nigeria. Many would challenge such a claim with the subsisting degree of human vegetation in IDP camps, the threat of famine, the human waste in weekly bomb blasts in and around Maiduguri, the nightmare of the atrocious practice of strapping young girls with bombs which someone somewhere would be detonating on cue, among others. And this is in spite of the military’s involvement.

But no less problematic is a concept of resilience that does not distinguish between the cultural subjectivity of the people in fighting off Boko Haram and the market discourse of security that resilience is fundamentally about. Without that distinction, resilience came off as such an innocent lexicon in Jibo’s analysis. Resilience is not so much about the culturally specific coping innovations in the face of danger in that piece but a neoliberal discourse of security that might draw on such anthropological constitution of communities or the configuration of same in favour of moving the people from fear of to anticipation and adaptation to danger, including the confidence and happiness in relying on learnt adaptive skills to provide for their own safety. So, resilience thus has to do with indoctrination about coming to grips with the ‘post-secure’ world in which “the danger is disorder”. That is the disruption in the language of resilience analysis or the ‘risk society’ argument which 9/11 has been cited as the most significant confirmation. So, from posting risks, the unthinkable or complex uncertainty as the most key building block of post 9/11 world, resilience seeks individualization of the task of turning insecurity into opportunities rather than apprehension of it. The question then is if that conscious coming to terms with insecurity as opportunity was what the study saw in the north east and north west.

It is doubtful that any communities in predominantly peasant Africa would have been manifesting such attributes when the communities in Katrina in industrialised United States of America did not. Not when it has been claims of alienation from disqualification and denial against the post-disaster management of Hurricane Katrina because “the neoliberal post recovery required survivors to become ‘entrepreneurs’ and ‘empowered consumers” who are called customers, clients and consumers rather than citizens.  One of the most detailed studies of Katrina disaster management showed the complete neoliberal take-over of the terms of managing the Katrina disaster to the point where “contracts for various services were so numerous and complex that ‘FEMA, (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) even had to hire a contractor to award contracts to contractors”.

Warisu O. Alli, Professor of International Relations at Nigeria’s University of Jos was @ the conference on resilience

Attahiru Jega, Professor of Political Science at Bayero University, Kano – Nigeria also attended

Prof Kathleen Tierney, the leading authority on resilience based at the University of Colorado has done an indicative listing of the leading drivers of resilience globally. They include The Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities Framework; The Community and Regional Resilience Institute; The Rockefeller Foundation; The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism based at the University of Maryland; The University of North Carolina’s Coastal Hazards Centre and The Centre for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorist Events. Notwithstanding the autonomy of idea and independent mindedness of intellectuals, the funding politics for these centres makes them inherently neoliberal incubation centres without them necessarily becoming supporters of neoliberal lens of the world.

The foregoing suggests the need to be careful in celebrating resilience. It is not an innocent concept. It is important to study the cultural or anthropological sensitivity or make-up of our people, their survivalist instincts in the face of rupture but carefully so in other not to fall prey to the market forces construction of resilience as a question of pushing responsibility for public safety to individuals and communities instead of probing macro structural context of risks. The truth is that our people, from the north to the south, do not have the resilience Jibo proclaims when we consider the nature of catastrophes that define the contemporary era – especially in the realm of global health, climate change, transnational terrorism and migration. How can we talk of resilience in counter-terrorism, for instance, when it is now basically a drone warfare affair? Energy would have topped the list if the United States were still an oil importing country, considering the Nixon and Carter doctrines. As things are today, one shudders to think what would happen when climate change starts manifesting around these shores. Unless magic happens and Nigeria overcomes her current confusion, the likelihood of people dying in thousands is almost a foregone conclusion. Neither our elite/political leaders nor the citizens believe in the threat from climate change, not to talk of anticipating and preparing for it. Yet, it is coming.

The study of resilience to Boko Haram stands at the threshold of breaking grounds in its promise of domesticating resilience in security studies in Nigeria, if not Africa. This is to the extent that it has enough data with which it can reconceptualise resilience as well as promote a discourse of resilience capable of reproducing itself for Nigeria’s national security, (that is to the extent that one could still talk of a national security in the age of globalisation). That way, it brings our engagement with the concept in line with Mohammed Ayoob’s critique of Emancipation paradigm of security. Contrary to Emancipation paradigm’s notion of security as freedom of the people from the constraints of the state, the US based Pakistani Political Scientist argued for positioning of the state as the definitive driver of Emancipation. His reason for saying so is that without state power, people in the ‘Third World’ cannot find their bearing in a world of power which is barren of honest brokers.

CITAD and the United States Institute of Peace which has supported the research on resilience to Boko Haram have simply accepted and even implemented Ayoob’s position, by bringing together young researchers who have also brought their research findings to the table under the gaze of some of Nigeria’s most established social scientists. So, it could be argued that everything needed for this study to make a statement on resilience from this part of the world are on the ground except Jibo’s unit of measurement, otherwise known as Jibogram.

Senior academics, discussants and researchers at the just ended “National Conference on Community Resilience to Boko Haram Insurgency” wondered if governments and leaders in Nigeria worry about certain practices which they equate with trapping the future. By trapping the future, they were referring to practices with potentials to explode in the future. One of such practices that came up in the course of comments, observations and questions across the sessions is the idea of school children wearing different sets of uniform in one school.  Participants wondered why it is important that children would be conscientised to their religious and cultural differences at such age in such a way that they can hardly outgrow. Warning that “our children are watching our steps”, some discussants expressed surprise that this happens in government owned schools where, in most cases, Christians wear a different set from Muslims. Does this worry the leaders, it was asked.

Intellectuals at a previous session of the conference

Prof Ogoh Alubo, a conference session chair

Similarly, the emergence of different markets for Christians and Muslims in some parts of the country was frowned at. So also is the emergent settlement pattern whereby Christians have their own sections and same for Muslims in many towns, cities and communities. Participants narrated the ordeal of individuals they knew who had to sell off, cheaply and quickly, the only house they managed to complete in order to relocate or risk being killed by youths of the ‘wrong’ community during violent conflicts.

Equally noted is the emergence of a parallel security system in terms of the street gating, high wall gates enveloping each house, neighborhood vigilante system, etc that mark an informal safety system as against the police and other organs that mark the formal system. In some cases, there are different District Heads for different sections of a community.

Although the items on this list emerged at different sessions at the conference, they cohere into the worry list of participants at the end of the day. The puzzle was always why the government or the leaders appear unfazed by any or all of these sorts of practices. Or always out of depth in terms of what alternatives should be the case.

But it was not one-way puzzles and no answers all the way. While no one had any explanation or answer to the cases of settlement patterns reflecting religious differences, the case of different markets was exonerated. According to contrary information, different markets in Jos, for instance, arose as a time-buying arrangement for tempers to cool, never as an official policy. “It was to create space for negotiation, to serve as a ceasefire kind of arrangement”, a participant told the conference. No one countered him on that submission.

Two other worries that got contrary analyses were why some people still believe no girls were abducted from Chibok and why is the abduction mediatised more than that of hundreds of other victims in Boko Haram series of atrocities. The second is what sense does society make from the statement of those who said that Boko Haram were freedom fighters or the tendering of apologies to Boko Haram by some three governors sometimes in the past.

While it was acknowledged that there are still people who are stuck with the conspiracy theory that abduction of the Chibok girls never happened but only something like that, organised to embarrass the government of the day, the question of media privileging of the plight of Chibok girls was related to the key features about it. According to Dr Kole Shettima, the first feature is the paradox in the failure of the idea of government it represents: government is supposed to protect everyone and here is a situation where this did not happen. The second feature is the sensitivity of the identity of the victims – they are all girls and were all students. The third is the way the abduction demonstrates the trend in the use of girls as weapons of war. “All these are situations that people cannot relate to and the media reflects that” and, hence, the demands that people do something about it as in the BBOGs campaign, it was stated.

A more comparative analogy came up in the question of people who described Boko Haram as freedom fighters ever before. What did they mean? Some discussants wanted to know what Boko Haram actually is. Is it a religious, specifically Islamicist movement or a criminal organisation involved in negative accumulation? If it is an Islamicist organisation, why does it attack mosques and kill Muslims also? Why did some scholars declare them freedom fighters when it started initially? Were they thinking it was something comparable to the IRA in Northern Ireland or even the African National Congress, (ANC) all of which started that way? Is it the case that people who made such statements now know better that Boko Haram is nothing of that sort? Questions! Questions!! And questions!!!

When Boko Haram bombed Police Headquarters in Abuja in June 2011

The Nigeria Police was not as lucky as Boko Haram. In spite of the presence of friendly and smiling police officers in uniform throughout the conference, discussants and other conferees descended on them as the case may be. Someone asked why the police collect bribe from both sides of every case. Earlier on, the celebration of Boko Haram in some communities initially when they were attacking only police and people in uniform generally was strongly cited as a bad omen. Such sense of relief that security agents were object of attack signposted pre-existing popular angst against the police and, by implication, the Nigerian State. If no such trust existed, how could there be sustainable resistance against a major disruption such as a murderous insurgency? It is hoped that the Nigerian State takes note as well as the Police Force itself.

Of equal concern was the attitude of the government in never resolving conflict because the government never goes beyond the violence phase. Once violence erupts, the government sends units of the Mobile Police or the army, in certain cases, ‘normalcy’ returns and the government forgets about the rest. Fact finding is never done, interfacing the protagonists and antagonists is never done, confidence building mechanisms are never put in place and the question of compensation is never addressed even in the most glaring cases of unfairness. So, the conflict goes down but not out. At the earliest opportunity, including where a community needs to act together in the face of collective danger, the old divide surfaces and makes this impossible because the old wounds was never well attended. Very few of the communities studied in the research rose above such divides.

Map showing Jigawa State in the Nigerian space

Why Boko Haram was basically absent in Jigawa remained a puzzle throughout the conference. The research report privileged leadership in its analysis. Some people acknowledged leadership but insisted on amending leadership to particular agency in analysing the Jigawa exception. In other words, leadership is too vague to be a useful analytic of the series of deliberate actions taken to keep Boko Haram off. Some people might quarrel with some of the actions but it was a case of what worked. The question of what worked was a constant in the research reports from the different states. In Yobe, when schools were relocated from some rural spaces to the state capital for fear that they could be attacked by Boko Haram, the decision was greeted with uproar. When Chibok girls were abducted from a typical rural school shortly after that, the relocation decision became the most applauded.

For those like this reporter who was on the ground in Jigawa during the time, the idea of giving more space to gubernatorial agency in trying to understand what happened was certainly not objectionable, not minding the devil’s advocate implication of saying so with the subsequent emergence of Sule Lamido as a sort of an elephant in the room. It should be difficult to be anything but a witness of truth for anyone who saw how things worked out. Moreover, it is not about accolades or denial of it to the then governor of Jigawa but about the theory that conflict management has become a disaster in Nigeria because of the crisis of political education and the associated governance tactics of most governors, if you take the state level. It could be said, up to a point that where a governor doesn’t want violent conflict, there would be none or, at worst, very few of such. Peace is a function of governance. And we must have the courage to say this for whoever proved this point, irrespective of personal or public reservations. Of course, there was an interesting analogy by the participant who wondered if the more apt explanation for the Jigawa puzzle in Boko Haram is not because Boko Haram commanders still have no idea that Jigawa and Kano are now two different states.

Governors at work: are they too overwhelmed as leaders?

Against the above background, the question would be: what sort of leadership, individual and collective, would permit school children wearing different uniforms in a same school in a multi-cultural formation as Nigeria; watch and do nothing over breakdown of trust between citizens and security agencies, allow settlement to be determined by one’s religious affiliation and even the market one patronises, among others. Is it that the leaders are not aware or they don’t understand the implications or they do not care. Or are they overwhelmed too? Why might any such possibilities exist? Is it time that would solve the problem or a deliberate choice to be made? By who and when if the solution lies in a deliberate choice? Professor Jibrin Ibrahim who coordinated the “National Conference on Community Resilience to Boko Haram Insurgency” must be right, in this context, to say the study is a potentially important one for a country which has been undergoing shocks, from kidnapping to rural banditry and full scale insurgencies that have tasked the national security establishment. That is if Jibo himself has not been too gleeful in relating to resilience. That would be the last subject on Intervention‘s coverage of the “National Conference on Community Resilience to Boko Haram Insurgency”.

Researchers in Nigeria studying the nature and pattern of resilience to Boko Haram insurgency have concluded on the note that breakdown of social cohesion, unemployment, leadership at local levels, crisis of trust between the people and security agencies, poverty and geography were the most decisive factors which shaped resilience to the Boko Haram insurgency in the north. At the two-day “National Conference on Community Resilience to Boko Haram Insurgency” which ended today, Friday, May 12^th, 2017 in Abuja, the preliminary research report explained how each of these factors worked out in such a way that resilience was low in some places, high in some others and simply indeterminate in yet others in the 20 settlements/communities studied in four states in the north east and Kano and Jigawa in the north west.

But it argued against the analogy that poverty made people align with Boko Haram or undermined resilience, saying that if that were so, then Jigawa State should have been the hub of insurgency rather than Yobe. Both states have basically the same cultural, religious and economic constitution. Or that Kano should not have seen much Boko Haram attacks at all, being the wealthiest of the three states –Kano, Jigawa and Yobe. It didn’t dismiss extreme poverty in the north, both as an instigator of violence and undermining factor of resilience. But it draws attention to how income inequality could be the dangerous dimension, citing how low income inequality gap helped resilience in Gombi contrary to how high income inequality gap undid resilience in Mubi where a few rich people co-existed with the rest.

Relating to unemployment, it said the situation whereby government forces would say that a thousand Boko Haram terrorists had been killed and another thousand turns up the next day spoke to how unemployment undermined resilience. It linked this to the success of Boko Haram’s strategy of loans, motorcycles and underwriting of marriage for those who could not afford it, mainly unemployed elements.

In the case of how communal cohesion favoured or undermined resilience, it cited Bama where historical disaffection between original and new settlers was a factor against community cohesion and Gwoza where Christian/Muslim disunity was at issue.

It gave the example of how geography as a factor worked for resilience for Biu in Borno State whose elevated location denied the insurgents advantage of sneaking into the area unlike Gwoza with its undulating space and hiding places for attackers. While leadership, especially of the Emir of Ningi in Bauchi State and leadership broadly in Gombi was a factor in the successful mobilisation and coordination of the local hunters as well as galvanising the Civilian Joint Task Force, (JTF), it was the opposite in some named towns and communities. It cited as a classic case of community trust crisis the celebration of Boko Haram in Yobe initially when attacks were concentrated on security forces and how the police looked a bit lukewarm when Boko Haram turned the gun on the generality of the people later. The preliminary report mentioned how things developed to a point where who to trust in sharing information about impending danger became a problem as no one trusted anyone, including security elements. This is contrasted to the community trust level which enabled everyone –Christians, Muslims, security operatives, etc in Azare in Bauchi, for example, to confront and overwhelm Boko Haram at great risks.

Making its recommendations, the research singled out incomplete resolution of conflicts as a major threat to community cohesion, stressed the primacy of developing local leadership, undermining hate speeches, strengthening Police –Community relations and entrenching inter-face between groups in the society.

It is a data rich report whose ranges can hardly be captured well very quickly. It had been two days of intense checking and cross-checking of data against conceptual and methodological claims, the end result of which could be a groundbreaking study of resilience in the African setting. In other words, the study of resilience strictly in terms of the subjective propensities of the people in the communities studied, resilience that has been completely outside of the influence of big business or market terms.

The first day saw a lot of attention and reflexivity on the question of when is it resilience, resistance or preventive measures and how might desperation activities be distinguished from the actions of what some scholars of resilience call the autotelic subject: the self-governing individual who has come to grips with the inevitability of disruption or uncertainties definitive of the age of rapid transnationalism and learnt adaptive skills that enables him or her or the community to turn insecurity into self-actualisation and even opportunities. A key question in this regard was, therefore, that posed by Professor Ogoh Alubo of the University of Jos, a session chair, regarding whether there are local terminologies for the concept of resilience.

Other key questions posed along the line includes that of what form of leadership emerged when official leadership abdicated; the gendered character, (women warrior) of ‘resilience’ in certain specific communities in Adamawa State, for example and the whole question of what notion of community the research was dealing with. Other questions included whether resilience is all about community reaction/responses/survival in certain ways and bouncing forward or about how resilience was organised and managed and with what successes or failures? How does resistance fit in if the dominant notion of it in the literature is as a critique of resilience in favour of attention to what some academics of resilience have called the macro-structures that give rise to risks.

A number of empirical questions also attracted attention such as the geography of Boko Haram’s insurgency, why Jigawa State, for instance, recorded very few attacks even though it is within the belt and how did Kano suffer so much losses even as it is not in the North-East. These questions might make the study harmonise or disentangle coping strategies, desperation activities, preventive measures, resilience and resistance.

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, the Coordinator of the “National Conference on Community Resilience to Boko Haram Insurgency” who provided an insight at the opening and closing sessions confessed that the study started with k-leg but had made the journey. He said it is a potentially important study for Nigeria which has, in his words, been undergoing shocks, from kidnapping to rural banditry and full scale insurgencies tasking for the national security establishment. He spoke of how sceptical he was about the study initially. That is not so anymore, he said, going further to harp on the differences in coping with the insurgency observable among different communities. While some responded to attacks with different defensive mechanisms, other communities were shattered. The issue is getting at the characteristic features of each pattern of response, with particular reference to the linkage to agency/leadership.

Declaring the conference open yesterday, Professor Attahiru Jega, immediate past Chairman of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) and Bayero University, Kano Professor of Political Science stressed the importance of the study. Pointing out how disasters and emergencies, be they Tsunamis, conflicts, have devastated communities, Jega, however, drew attention to how such communities must pick up the pieces and get on with life. For that reason, said Jega, it is of importance to understand how communities cope with such social, economic and political upheavals.

Mallam Y Z Y’au, Executive Director of the Centre for Information Technology and Development, (CITAD) which organised the research spoke of how problematic methodology was for the study that the workshop on it had to be repeated. He spoke not just to the question of how to determine and access the information needed for the study but also to what many of the senior academics at the conference regarded as the crisis of methodology in Nigerian scholarship.

Aside from Professors Jibrin Ibrahim and Attahiru Jega, there were Professor Ogoh Alubo of the University of Jos, Professors Sam Egwu and Pam Dung Sha of the Department of Political Science at the University of Jos, Professors Hauwa Biu and Pat Donli, both of the University of Maiduguri,, Asmau Joda, the Yola based gender activist and member of the Presidential Committee on the North East, Dr. Aminu Aliyu of the Department of Economics in Bayero University, Kano, Ene Edeh from Search for Common Ground, (SFCG) and Mallam Yunusa Zakeri Y’au, the Executive Director of the Centre for Information Technology and Development, (CITAD) which is running the resilience research with support from the United States Institute for Peace.

By Hamza Ibrahim Chinade.

The Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has organized a capacity building workshop for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in Taraba state on Internet Security and Safety issues. The training which took place at Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) secretariat Jalingo was aimed at alerting and equipping members of civil society on insecurity concerns and how to prevent themselves against threats such as fraud, hacking, data and documents thefts, phishing, email-spoofing, cybercrime, personality theft, identify theft, online blackmail and harassment and other serious security issues.

Sessions facilitated at the workshop included Understanding Internet Security and Safety, General Online Safety Tips among others. Participants expressed their happiness for the training that some of them described as a barricade to internet insecurity and threats. Ubale M. Umarah of Rural Education Improvement and Development (REID) commended CITAD’s effort at organizing the training and hopes the organization will look at the possibility of holding another similar training for other internet users which according to him are ignorant of what the participants were taught. Another participant, Nadi Fwaje of Taraba State University admitted that the training has provided him with security and safety tips on using the internet and he will now be cautious of what he used to ignore for his own safety.

The training ended with an experience sharing on the theme of the workshop “Internet Security and Safety Training” to allow for debate and make the issues even more practical and glaring, many questions were asked and explanation made by the facilitators.

By Hamza Ibrahim Chinade.

As it widens the scope and strategy of curbing Hate and Dangerous Speech in Nigeria especially on social and conventional media with a view to ending religious and tribal speech, utterances or comments that pose threat to peace and mutual coexistence among adherents of different religions, tribes, affiliations, or groups, the Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has engaged people of the North-Eastern part of the country in Jalingo, the Taraba state capital in a public sensitization lecture that extensively treated issues of concern on Hate and Dangerous Speech.

CITAD implements “Curbing Hate and Dangerous Speech Project” with support from Mac Arthur Foundation and has been holding public sensitizations across different regions of the country to complement the monitoring and countering Hate and Dangerous Speech, engaging religious, tribal and community leaders, monthly press briefing and other mechanisms aimed at putting a stop to Hate and Dangerous Speech as well as promoting understanding, tolerance and mutual respect among people.

Giving an opening remark, the project’s coordinator who is also the Senior Programmes Officer Peace and Conflict, Malam Isah Garba noted that the Jalingo public sensitization is a continuation of the project’s engagement with the public in order to enlighten them and seek their inputs towards eradicating Hate and Dangerous Speech especially on social media cautioning that Hate and Dangerous Speech poses a serious threat that needs to be confronted collectively, he added that Jalingo was chosen to host the public sensitization for North-East.

The participants were sensitized on the concept of Hate and Dangerous Speech, their criteria and qualifications, countering measures and how they can join the advocacy for condemning Hate and Dangerous Speech and strengthening and promoting the cause of peace especially among social media users. Many questions were raised by the participants and addressed by the facilitators. Other participants also recommended that the sensitization be conducted continuously and at different states other than on regional basis so that numerous stakeholders will be targeted. Following the public sensitization lecture, the participating students from Taraba State University and College of Education Zing have resolved to establish Students for Peace Associations in their institutions while grass root youths organizations that have no online presence also resolved to create social media accounts to join the campaign and communicate resolutions of the sensitizations to other youths who are absent the lecture. The public sensitization ended with a communiqué jointly released by the participating CSOs, religious and tribal organizations. The event was attended by representatives of Jama’atul Nasril Islam (JNI), Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), youths and students associations, women groups, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Associations of Nigeria (MACBAN) and the media among others.

This form must be completed and submitted by all prospective participants

Introduction

The Annual Abuja Sumer Institute (ASI) for Young Women is an Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) and Women’s Rights Advancements and Protection Alternative (WRAPA) in collaboration with the African Studies Program at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the Everett Program, an Info Tech Social Entrepreneurial training organization from the University of California, Santa Cruz are starting an Annual Abuja Summer Institute (ASI) for Young Women.

The institute is designed to provide ICT training and marketable skills for young women from the NW and NE Zones, areas of Nigeria where opportunities are extremely limited. The curriculum will include training on blogging such as WordPress, the use of graphic apps for events, weddings, etc, digital video and photographic applications, mobile phone/GSM applications for micro-enterprises, and other applications.  The Institute’s objective is to provide real world, practical training in ICT tools that will empower young women work in the ICT industry and to start Micro-enterprises that will add value to their communities.  The long term goal is to boost northern women’s capacity to participate in and to grow northern economy.

The institute which will hold in Abuja lasts for one week. A few scholarships are available for to cover accommodation and feeding for qualified young women from the North East and North East of Nigeria.

Minimum Requirements

Applicants must be female from either the North East or North West and must:

1. A minimum of secondary school education
2. Adequate written and spoken English Language Proficiency
3. Computer literate
4. Present certificate of indigence of any of the states from the two regions

How to Apply

1. Click this Button to Download the PDF and print for offline filling and send to info@citad.org 
2. Fill the online form below and submit

FORM