The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) with support from MacArthur Foundation has today convened a Multi-Genre Campaign for a Transparent Nigeria, with it cluster members which consists of various social influencers across the country. The meeting was held at Grand Pela Hotels, Abuja.

In his opening remarks, the Executive Director of CITAD, Dr. YZ Yau explained that the purpose of the meeting was to assess the impact of what the subgrantees has been doing, to identify challenges and how the cohort can move forward in the already set campaign for Anticorruption, transparency, accountability and good governance in Nigeria. The ED also welcomed the new grantees who recently joined the cohort of the social influencers.

Dr. Dayo Olaide who delivered a Message on behalf of MacArthur Foundation, started with thanking the Cohort for their support and effort put in the project. He added that the influencers cohort is making incredible efforts in the fight against corruption in Nigeria. Dayo added that this was the first time MacArthur Foundation granted funds to individual due to the influence they exalt in fighting corruption through their use of multiple mediums mostly social media, newspapers, magazine, radio and televisions as well as the theatre play. Others include workshops and community filming.

Dr. Tunde Akanni of Lagos State University who is also the Project Advisor explained that Nigeria occupies a more visible space and other climes are watching to tell their own story. He also explained that the subgrantees brilliant ways of fighting the corruption should not die off but be documented for future references. Documentation or Evidence is a crucial part of the review. It can serve the purpose of telling the story of all the work done. Social Media and Filming is a very important impact in fighting all forms. Dr. YZ Yau also added that the review will be a documentation that all the sub grantees all do, emphasing that it’s important we tell our stories which will serve as a compact to document MacArthur will use for the review.

The meeting continued with a brief review of the subgrantees progress report comprising of their activities, impacts made and success stories achieved, challenges, mitigation strategies as well lesson learnt.

Towards the end of the meeting, a session on Monitoring and Evaluation (ME) was held to ensure that the subgrantees are conversant with the ME process of their project for a proper evidence based reporting.

As an ICT based organization that is committed to the use of ICT for development, The Centre for Information Technology and Deployment (CITAD) has over the years facilitated numerous engagements towards bridging the wide digital skills gab, these include series of campaigns, advocacies, trainings, stakeholders’ engagements among others. And today, the 15^th of January, 2020 CITAD flagged up capacity building exercise on the use of ICT tools for the staff of Bauchi state ministry of education in order to better their work. In attendance were the Honourable Commissioner, Permanent Secretary, Directors and other senior officers of the Ministry.

In his opening remarks, Dr. Y.Z Ya’u, the Executive Director of the Centre ably represented by the Training Coordinator, Malam Ahmad Yakasai said the first phase of the project will focus on training Examination and ICT Directorate. Yakasai maintained that CITAD has been putting a lot of efforts that is aimed at bridging the wide digital skills gab; CITAD has gone to many remotest villages and established ICT training centres in Abuja communities and CITAD is now planning to launch ICT lab for people with special needs so that they will not be left behind. Now that ICT come to stay, one good thing about ICT is, it has neither gender nor age bias, which makes it a must for everyone to acquire the skills regardless of one’s gender or age.

In his remark, the Honourable Commissioner, Bauchi State Ministry of Education, Dr. Aliyu Usman Tilde showed appreciation for the gesture extended to the Ministry by CITAD. In his words, “ICT compliance is the most important aspect of the ministry’s reforms” There has not been much noise about it because it concerns about the staff not anyone else. Compliance to ICT makes cumbersome tasks easier. Dr. Tilde attributed his ability to developing frequent lengthy write ups on News Papers in the late 90s to the use of ICT. Saying; it would not have been possible for him without complying with ICT. The large size of education ministry makes most of our challenges in education, and ICT is in to help us reduce the burden to the minimal level possible. And there is no way one can avoid misinformation or communication gab when dealing with large number of stakeholders but when aided by tech the whole bunch of the trouble is resolve by just a single click.

Before he retire to his seat, the Commissioner made some announcements that made the gathering paid more attention these include, that henceforth, appointments into the ministry as ordinary staff or director will be based on ICT compliance, the ministry as from next year will not contract anybody to do NECO and WAEC examination registration; examination department will be responsible for all these online registration. Our plan is for everyone to be IT compliance in the next three years.

I urge you to take this training very serious, you are the pioneers, you have all the facilities here and sky shall be your limit, he added.

After closing prayers, pre-test was administered to the staff that will be trained to help ascertain the level of ICT knowledge; this will help the CITAD training department to design the package that will better suit the participating staff.