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.