By

Ibrahim Aboki, CITAD, Bauchi

As part of its develop to develop the capacity of CSOs in Bauchi State to monitor the implementation of the State Public Procurement Law, CITAD with support from Pact Nigeria held a one-day training workshop on ICTs and Social Media For Information Sharing. The workshop which held on Monday 24^th October, 2011 at Iya Abubakar Community Resource Centre, State Library, Bauchi was attended by representatives of 20 CBOs from across the State.

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YZ Yau Addressing the participants		Cross section of the participants
Cross section of participants		Cross section of participants
Mr. Yinka Lawal addressing the participant		Cross section of participants

The Executive director of CITAD, Engr. Yunusa Zakari Ya’u who gave welcome remarks at the beginning of the workshop said that this was an opportunity for the CBOs to learn to use ICTs to share information, report on their monitoring activities and general use them to enhance their organizational effectiveness. He stressed the need for the participants to effective use of the opportunity. Delivery a goodwill message, Mr. Yinka Lawal of PactNigeriawelcomed the training which he described as a major state in the efforts making towards promoting transparency and accountability in the State. He saidNigeriawas faced with leadership problem which could also be overcome through the mainstreaming of transparency and accountability in governance. he finally commended CITAD for a good job it was doing.

The first facilitator was Mallam Ahmad Yakasai who took the participants through the topic Understanding ICTs to lay the foundation for the training. He discussed the concept of ICT and its various dimensions, ending with posers on the key problems militating against the effective use of ICTs in the country.

The second session, facilitated by Bashir Muzakkari was on social media and social networking. He took the participants through the evolution of social media and social networking, noting the differences between the two and interactively demonstrated the various uses of both social media and social networking. At the end of the session, he helped a number of those who did not have facebook accounts to set up one and also established a group for members of the network named Bauchi Procurement Monitors with which members could share information and discuss on issues of common interest.

The third session facilitated by Engr Kamaludden Umar was devoted on online document and data storage. He outlined some advantages and disadvantage of online data. He carried the participants through various methods and techniques of storing documents online including use of mail accounts, web space and commercial storage sites.  He also facilitated the session on advanced search techniques Engr. Kamal as well as on online language translation tools. As part of the online tools, he also took a session on used of ICTs for surveys, taking time to demonstrate how to set up online questionnaire and the use of frontline sms using our browsers on mobile phones to carry out questionnaire administration.

The last facilitator was Engr. Yunusa Zakar Ya’u, the executive director of CITAD, who had a very short session running and managing list serves as tool for sharing information and facilitating discussion among group members   .