Kole Shettima and Erin Sines, Co-Directors of On Nigeria, reflect on how to tell the story of anti-corruption successes, especially when success is defined by what did not happen.
We are a learning program, situated in a learning organization. That means that we and our partners are committed to defining what future success will look like—in our case, a more accountable and less corrupt Nigeria, where people have access to the goods and services to which they are entitled—and to articulating milestones that indicate we are on the right track.
Our team, like others at the Foundation, is reviewing our strategy, reflecting on what we have accomplished, revisiting our assumptions, and charting the path forward.
An important part of the review is telling the story of what has gone well and what has not worked as well as we had hoped.
As part of the review, we carefully consider the strategy-level data collected by our evaluation and learning partner, EnCompass. Over the last month, we and the more than 80 On Nigeria grantees have been considering the implications of the most recent round of data and what it means for our next steps. Important concerns have arisen.
For example, we support efforts to strengthen transparency and accountability provisions of the Universal Basic Education Commission’s (UBEC) matching grant fund and the Home Grown School Feeding Program (HGSF), while also funding community groups to monitor the implementation of those two programs.
The UBEC fund is a more mature program, established in 1999; HGSF is newer, launched in 2016 as part of the Social Investment Program.
So far, progress in UBEC has been about “rooting out” corruption, while HGSF’s progress has been about preventing corruption and keeping it from taking hold in the program. Although there are more corruption concerns in UBEC—perhaps unsurprisingly for a program that has been around for decades—the success stories include tangible, photo-worthy examples of formerly dilapidated schools with shiny new roofs, desks, and classrooms. Progress has… read on main site
