Nigerian Civic Tech Platforms Deepen Transparency As Citizens Track Budgets And Monitor Projects

Digital technology is quietly reshaping how ordinary Nigerians engage with governance, moving citizens from passive observers to active monitors of public spending and service delivery.

At the heart of this shift are platforms like BudgIT and its project-tracking tool Tracka, which have spent over a decade turning complex budget documents into accessible information that citizens can act upon.

BudgIT, founded to simplify public finance data, launched Tracka in 2014 as a social platform where citizens could collaborate, track and give feedback on government projects in their communities.

The platform was designed to address a critical problem: low citizen participation in budget implementation, which had allowed public funds to be diverted without scrutiny.

“We believe in Nigeria, where public funds must work for the people’s good,” BudgIT states, explaining that Tracka seeks to ensure the budget works for citizens through inclusive participation.

The impact has been measurable. Over eight years, Tracka has monitored more than 17,811 projects across federal, state and local government levels, recording over 3,500 success stories.

By 2025, the platform had expanded to 30 states, tracked 2,760 public projects valued at 2.77 trillion naira, and recorded 1,438 project completions driven by citizen-led accountability.

Community members have used Tracka data to confront elected officials directly. In one documented interaction, a resident called a politician to ask about a borehole project nominated for five million naira, telling him: “Some people called BudgIT Tracka came and told us. They even showed us where it is in the budget”.

The platform has also facilitated formal accountability. In 2025, Tracka issued 1,250 letters to ministries, departments and agencies requesting information, securing 17 official responses and four concrete interventions.

Findings on 71 projects worth 3.79 billion naira with partial or non-implementation were escalated to anti-corruption agencies and National Assembly committees, prompting invitations for contractors to be interrogated.

BudgIT’s reach has been amplified through artificial intelligence. Its AI-powered public finance assistant, BIMI, allows citizens to ask plain-English questions about budgets and receive instant answers, a process that previously took hours or days.

“A small community activist in Kaduna, a young mother in Awka, or a teacher in Abeokuta can interact with Nigeria’s public finance data as easily as they use mobile banking apps,” BudgIT noted, describing how BIMI has made fiscal information accessible in ways previously impossible.

The organisation has trained over 700 students in data journalism at Nigerian universities and empowered more than 1,500 community champions across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory in AI prompting and data analytics.

Citizen engagement is also being strengthened at the local government level. In Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos State, the local government has established a Digital Civic Centre accessible via web and mobile apps, allowing residents to lodge complaints, track capital projects by ward, and participate in community polls.

The local government also holds quarterly public town halls and ward-based community budget councils, with simplified budget summaries published in English and Yoruba to ensure broader accessibility.

New platforms continue to emerge. In 2026, iLEAD AFRICA launched iMonitor, a citizen-driven accountability platform with features allowing citizens to report community issues, track public service delivery, and access civic information through an AI chatbot.

The platform’s chief executive, Yusuff Liadi, described it as “civic infrastructure designed to bridge the gap between citizens and governance,” serving as a participation channel beyond election periods.

These civic technology efforts are complemented by Nigeria’s Open Government Partnership commitments. Civil society organisations have called on President Bola Tinubu to sign the Fourth National Action Plan, which contains 12 commitments across areas including procurement, budget transparency and open contracting.

“Citizens have the right to demand information about government activities and plans because government exists to serve the people in a representative democracy,” said Princess Hamman-Obels of the Initiative for Research, Innovation, Advocacy in Development.

The Freedom of Information Act 2011 provides the legal foundation for these efforts, granting citizens the right to access public records and obliging institutions to respond within seven days.

The Act also imposes penalties for wrongful denial of access, with fines of 500,000 naira, and criminal sanctions for the destruction or falsification of records, carrying a minimum of one year imprisonment.

The Fiscal Responsibility Commission has also partnered with BudgIT through a Memorandum of Understanding to strengthen fiscal transparency, including the use of Tracka and the BudgIT Budget App for fiscal monitoring and citizen feedback.

For BudgIT, the mission remains grounded in a simple conviction: that information is power, and that power belongs to citizens. As one staff member reflected on joining the organisation: “I realised that lacking access to this information had deprived me and everyone else in society of the ability to demand change from our leaders”.