Itse Sagay, UNODC’s Oliver Stolpe, FRSC Boboye Oyeyemi, Others, Storm Abuja for anti-corruption App Launch Today

All roads lead to the Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, this morning, where the Akin Fadeyi Foundation, AFF, Conveners of the Corruption: Not In My Country project, will, in collaboration with the Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, launch a mobile and web application device designed to empower Nigerians to report corruption.

An initiative of the AFF the Report-Corruption-App, called FLAG’IT, is funded by the John.D and Catharine. T. MacArthur Foundation and designed to promote the anti-corruption fight in Nigeria by working with public institutions to open up their processes for transparency, accountability and excellent service delivery.

With FLAG’IT App, citizens would be able to report and document their experiences around corruption and engage with government officials on issues bordering service delivery and corrupt practices across the country. The App also has a feature for documenting positive stories about credible and outstanding public Officers.

The launch of the app, billed to commence at 10 a.m., will attract eminent personalities like: Oliver Stolpe, Country Representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; Professor Itse Sagay, leading anti-corruption crusader, and chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption; Dr. Boboye Oyeyemi, Corp Marshal of Federal Roads Safety Commission, FRSC; as well as Mr. Dapo Olorunyomi, Publisher, Premium Times. Others are Dr. Kole Shettima, Co-Director, On-Nigeria and Africa Director, MacAuthur Foundation; and Simon Kolawole, Founder of The Cable. They will speak at the event in which Prof. Sagay will give the keynote address.

Aalso at the event, a panel of discussants shall also rub minds, in a technical session with FRSC officials, on the inherent benefits of institutional collaborations in fighting corruption. They are: Ajuri Ngelale, Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs; Ramatu Umar Bako, Head of Public Engagement, OXFAM; Ademola Adigun, TEAM lead at Facility for Oil Sector Transformation, (FOSTER); Dr. Chido Onumah, Executive Director, AFRICMIL; as well as Auwal Rafsanjani, Executive Director, CISLAC, and Board Chair, Transparency International, Nigeria.

A release by Peter Adesanya, AFF’s Communications Officer, recalled that last September, the Akin Fadeyi Foundation announced a strategic partnership with the Federal Roads Safety Corps on the Report-Corruption-App and expressed strong confidence that the birth of the App would mark the beginning of a reawakening of the consciousness of Nigerians to combat corruption.

Akin Fadeyi Foundation is one of the Grantees in MacAuthur Foundation’s on going BET-ON-NIGERIA Project, and has been in the vanguard of deploying drama parodies to campaign against corruption in Nigeria.

Working with the cream of Nigerian artists like Saka, Tina Mba, Jude Orhorha, Efe Orhorha, Funky Mallam, etc., the drama project, titled Corruption Not In My Country, was conceptualized to trigger a soul search and self-re-evaluation as part of the processes of nation building.

In announcing today’s event, AFF Founder and Executive  Director, Akin Fadeyi said, “The need to explore a technology-driven tool to empower citizens’ and stimulate public institutions’ engagement in fighting corruption in Nigeria, following  the outcome derived from our previous campaigns and researches on the efficacy of technological innovation as a sure bet mechanism for providing measurable feedback, analytics and insights for effecting sustainable service delivery, makes FLAG’IT a valuable tool in our ambitious quest for a corrupt-free public service. We, therefore, urge Nigerians to download FLAG’IT APP after the launching from October 10 and join us in demanding for transparency and accountability in our public institutions”.