Civic Hive, a civic tech accelerator, has graduated its second set of fellows as part of its annual fellowship programme.
The programme which takes the form of a competition is geared towards deepening the civic technology and government technology space in Nigeria, as the graduands developed workable solutions to Nigeria’s numerous problems.
The fellowship programme focuses on the themes: Transparency and Accountability, Civic Participation, and Institutional Efficiency in Nigeria.
The six graduands at the event held in Lagos yesterday presented papers on various topics ranging from lack of transparency in Nigeria’s local government system, weak and inefficiency in public institutions in Nigeria, ill practices in Nigeria’s justice system, to pension injustice and constitution lapses etc.
They all backed their identified problems with workable solutions that can be used to solve those problems identified.
During their separate presentations, they said some of the solutions are currently being deployed already, as they are being used to tackle some of the nation’s challenges.
One of the graduands, Adejoke Are, who spoke on behalf of other fellows lauded Civic Hive for the initiative and expressed optimism that the solutions prescribed at the event would go a long way in engendering good governance in Nigeria.
Adejoke, who is a trained lawyer, was the team lead of Flemer – a project that leverages on technology to facilitate the provision of legal representation to indigent pre-trial detainees charged with minor offences by assigning their cases to volunteer lawyers signed up with it, and uses the same platform to monitor the progress of the legal representation by these lawyers.
This project, according to Adejoke, has helped over 40 illegal detainees to get lawyers and help them hear their cases in court. She noted that it has aided the release of many others on bail, just as one of them has been discharged.
Other projects by the fellows are: Cartooning for Civic Education, Servicorps, Constitution Lab, Pension Justice and Govmetre.
In his remarks, Civic Hive manager, Iyanuoluwa Bolarinwa, said: “The fellowship programme helps to expand the civic environment giving more people the advantage of coming into the space; likewise for us to support their works and see how we can help them execute their ideas through our programmes.
“The last set of fellows are very awesome because we only just dive into the programme without expecting much results, but they came out very productive; they are out there now doing great works. We have among them Gavel, Amplifier, Edu planner and lots more.
“They all have been able to surpass the things they thought they will be able to do while they were engaging in the fellowship programme.”
He said he’s hopeful that their solutions will become great ideas that Nigerians across the country will be able to use.
He encouraged innovative youths to also buy into the idea and use the opportunity that Civic Hive provides to channel their solution-based ideas into solving numerous problems facing the country.
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