KEY POINTS
- A new platform KnowDemWell tracks and rates performance of Nigerian politicians.
- Tinubu’s administration ratings stand at 31.97 percent, with 24 plotting human rights and democracy.
- Platform to extend tracking to all levels of government and all over Africa.
KnowDemWell, a new civic platform for monitoring and evaluating Nigerian politicians, has been opened to track and score the performance of Nigerian politicians.
A platform assesses politicians on the basis of their campaign promises as well as actual performance across 7 key indices.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Accessment.
After 18 months in office, the platform rated President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s first term in office at 31.97 percent.
In Commitment to Democracy, Human Rights and Gender Equality, the score stood at 24 percent and also 20 percent in Commitment to Poverty Eradication. Most notable of all was the establishment of the Ministry of Livestock Development, which was not part of Tinubu’s campaign manifesto at all.
This initiative scored the medium 50 percent, which means that some progress has been made in areas that were not promised at first in this initiative.
Created by Nigerian author and activist Raphael Adebayo, the platform seeks to encourage both civic education and public accountability.
Adebayo picked his words during the launch to say that the platform is a non partisan tool to enable Nigerians assess the performance of politicians at all levels of government.
Adebayo added that, “KnowDemWell is a comprehensive, non partisan and accurate information hub where you can get and understand the ideological views and policies of politicians and political candidates across all tier of government in Nigeria”.
The platform categorizes political figures’ campaign promises and performance under key indices such as:
– Our commitment of Democracy, Human Rights and Gender Equality
– The commitment to poverty eradication
– Educational and Social change Commitment
KnowDemWell’s goal through this tracking system is to make electoral consequences normal for politicians who don’t do what they say they’ll do or don’t perform in office the way they promise.
KnowDemWell exposes the troublesome aspects that plagued Tinubu’s performance
KnowDemWell has found nine major corruption scandals and ongoing controversies over the academic qualifications of President Tinubu’s administration, which they find to be one of the most striking in their analysis of Bola Ahmed Tinubu. They look at these factors as affecting his overall performance rating.
Adebayo labelled Tinubu’s administration a form of “totalitarian democtacy,” pseudo democratic style in which government authority is highly centralised, opposition is weakend and monopolded by a single figure of power.
According to Adebayo, Nigerians have witnessed since the time Mr. Tinubu broke into power, the socio political economic events have been all about totalitarianism behind the smoke screen of democracy.
What KnowDemWell’s platform does is to introduce an innovative performance rating system rating politicians in low, medium, high to create benchmarks to measure the performance of Nigeria’s elected leaders. Following politicians’ promises give power to the people to show the politicians responsibility for their actions or inaction.
As the future of things, Adebayo hinted that KnowDemWell could expand its coverage to all levels of governance in Nigeria and across Africa.
It intends to develop into a continental tool meant to create a greater political transparency by allowing citizens to track politicians’ performance across the borders of Nigeria.
KnowDemWell brings a new paradigm of political accountability to the table, allowing citizens to ask for better governance through a devised review of politicians’ actions.
The platform rates public officials and presents evidence for their analysis in order to improve the standard of political leadership in Nigeria and eventually across Africa.
