The African Country Director, MacArthur Foundation, Dr Kole Shettima, has urged Nigerian youths to partner at organisational and individual levels to monitor community projects in their constituencies.
He gave the charge on Tuesday in Abuja at formal launch of ProjectTrust and Retreat/Capacity Building workshop on Utilisation of the FollowTheMoney Model and Promoting Transparency and Accountability at Sub-national Levels organised by Connected Development (CODE) and MacArthur Foundation.
Dr Shettima said it was important for youths to team up and work together in their own states to get things done and advance goals that everyone are working for.
“I think that many of us, we have our own projects that we do, but we hardly come together as whole ambassadors or whole people, we come together within our own state, within our own local government, in order to find the goal that all of us are working towards.
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“I think that it makes it exciting, about this idea of bringing people together, people who probably have been working in silos, within the same school or within the same state, but now working together and working as cohorts in the same system.
“You will be able to leverage your knowledge, your networks of experience to each other, and also try to create new opportunities for each other, instead of all of you working in silos.
“I am happy that this project is also been expanded to other parts of the country. I think this shows the scalability of the work that we are doing, and shows that this is something that probably has been accepted, that has been tried, that can work in different contexts,” Shettima said.
He also said, “But I think that broadening this work beyond the initial stage is also an indication of what work has been done earlier. I think the work that CODE and a number of the social entrepreneurial organizations have been doing in this country should be written and documented so that you can also learn about this work that you are doing, not only here in Nigeria, but also globally.”
Speaking earlier, the Chief Executive, CODE and Founder, Follow The Money, Mallam Hamzat B. Lawal, said that the project aimed to galvanize Civil Society Organizations and Community-Based Organizations through the formation of a Community of Practice (CoP) in elevating social accountability processes and advocating for transparency and accountability.
He said that this is in six strategically selected states across the six Geopolitical zones in Nigeria: Kwara from the North Central, Anambra in the South East, Bayelsa in the South South, Jigawa in the North West, Yobe in the North East, and Osun from the South West.
