FAQs

This involves the allocation of funding for projects as proposed by the Executive and approved by the Legislature. Once the Appropriation Act comes into being, the Executive retains the responsibility of funding and implementing the projects while the Legislature maintains oversight to ensure value for money. The budgetary process contains mini other stages guided by administrative guidelines which can sometimes be cumbersome and constitute hindrance to the smooth implementation of projects. It is however recommended for continual reforms.

Constituency Projects are public projects attracted to a constituency by a member of the National or State Assembly and appropriated in his/her name in the annual budget. Constituency Projects are also called Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIP) in the national budget of Nigeria.

There is currently no national legislation on Constituency Projects but the Senate and House of Representatives are considering separate bills in both chambers to cater for the scheme. The National Assembly has adhoc measures in place to guide the operation of Constituency Projects, especially with respect to budgetary allocation to Senators and Members of the House of Representatives. Lagos State is the only State in the country that has a law on Constituency Projects that was passed in the year 2000.

In theory, legislators are required to confer with their constituents at regular intervals to determine the choice, location and implementation of Constituency Projects, among other issues relating to their legislative stewardship. In practice however, some legislators either solely determine the parameters or short-circuit this requirement, thereby denying the key ingredients of inclusiveness, transparency and accountability in Constituency Projects.

No. The doctrine of separation of powers places that function with the Executive branch of government. But legislators have been accused of using proxies to award contracts for the projects to themselves or demanding and receiving hefty kick-backs, charges they repeatedly deny.

At the national level, the Executive monitors and evaluates the implementation of Constituency Projects through the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, although the repository of this function has been known to vary from administration to administration. In Lagos State, the law requires each constituency to have a Projects Monitoring Committee comprising the legislator representing it and four other community leaders. Evaluation reports are however hardly publicized, spiking concerns about transparency and accountability.

ConsTrack is an OrderPaper project designed to trigger and promote increased and informed citizens’ participation as well as appropriate interfaces with elected representatives in parliament regarding the choice and implementation of constituency projects across the country. It is an innovation project supported by USAID.

How does ConsTrack work?

ConsTrack is anchored on a mobile application through which citizens can track, monitor and report progress on constituency projects in real time.

The main objective of ConsTrack is to engender inclusiveness, transparency and accountability in constituency projects and at the same time, set off a massive and sustained nationwide engagement between citizens and elected representatives.

How did ConsTrack evolve?

The ConsTrack project passed through various phases of consultations and advocacy involving stakeholders such as members of the National and State Assemblies, Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), traditional rulers, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), and Media, ETC. This robust consultative process was necessary to reflect exhaustive inputs into the development of the ConsTrack App.

What is the ConsTrack App?

The ConsTrack App is a user-friendly installation for mobile devices which provides a verified and holistically organized data base of constituency projects in the country with regards to location, funding, and status of implementation. The App allows for citizens in the comfort of their communities to track and report on the projects directly. On the app there are clear indicators that specify the status of projects and allows for discussions and engagements of ALL stakeholders.

Use of the ConsTrack App follows these simple and easy steps: Download, Register, Explore and Engage. The trove of verified information on constituency projects provided in the App offers a basis to interrogate and engage on their status. However, to maintain focus and guide interactions of stakeholders (users, ConsTrack trackers, legislators, etc), it is required that posts are centred on projects.

Given that citizens are allowed to post comments on projects at will, OrderPaper only takes responsibility for claims on the status of projects it has duly VERIFIED after diligent authentication processes. Look out for an assign on the status of projects verified by us.

• The App is scalable for multilingual interactions, especially English, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, and Pidgin languages. Furthermore, it allows online and offline interfaces; and has a built-in SMS integration to address issue of rural penetration and data availability.
• The App has a controlled multi-layer back-end access that would allow stakeholders, especially the media, gather categories of data that will further enrich investigative reportage and continuous engagement around constituency projects.
• The App is anchored on verified and verifiable data that is reinforced through a validation process involving crowd-sourced and individual based tracking and reporting channels.
• All data embedded in the app are verified and verifiable from official sources such as the appropriation act; and there are layers of projects verification and validation including dedicated trackers and CSO partners.
• The App allows citizens to post their findings (text, pictures, audio and videos) and comments on the status of projects they follow; and also comment on posts made by other users. Posts may be made anonymously and comments can automatically be shared on social media to allow increased interaction among stakeholders.

The ConsTrack App offers a specialized platform purposely built for citizens’ engagements on the constituency projects of members of the National and State Assemblies for which billions of naira are budgeted and funded annually. While it allows citizens to measure the performance of their legislators, it also empowers lawmakers to tell their stories of projects implementation, thereby ensuring a balanced and healthy interface in the public interest.

The broad objective of ConsTrack is to infuse INCLUSIVENESS, TRANSPARENCY & ACCOUNTABILITY in constituency projects; instigate the adoption of or amendment of relevant policy frameworks to guide their operations; and provide empirical facts to validate or reject the arguments for the sustenance of the scheme going forward.

The ConsTrack project received global recognition when OrderPaper won the inaugural Global Technology for Development (Tech4Dev) innovation contest organized by Chemonics International for innovation projects worldwide.