Actionaid Nigeria, CITAD Employ Artistic Expression as Advocacy Strategy for Neglected Abuja Communities

One of the artistic creation by CITAD and Actionaid Nigeria Team at the event on Saturday. Photo credit: Humanity Watch

The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has taken it advocacy for neglected communities in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) of Nigeria to another dimension.

CITAD is a non-governmental organisation that is committed to the use of information and communication technologies for development and promotion of good governance.

 With supports from Actionaid Nigeria which is working to ensure social justice, equity and good governance in the society, the organisation has resorted to the use of visual arts as part of strategies to draw attention of government at all levels, non-governmental organisations and other well-meaning Nigerians to the plight of these communities.

Work in progress. Photo credit: Humanity Watch

 At an event tagged: ‘Artistic Creation,’ put together by the organisation on Saturday, May 22, 2021 in Abuja, Humanity Watch learnt that the activity was part of the Youth Digital Engagement Project (YDE) of CITAD supported by Actionaid Nigeria.

During the event, the youths engaged in paintings which they used to express the problems facing communities in the FCT which were accompanied with messages such as: “Give social development programs priority in budget planning and implementation for job creation,”  “in rural communities in FCT, at least 9 out of every 10 youth has not benefited from any government intervention program: Make government intervention programs accessible.”

The FCT State Coordinator for the Youth Digital Engagement Project, Mubarak Ekute making an input during the art creation while Tsav Peter takes note. Photo credit: Humanity Watch

Inspired by the powerful effect of pictures and its impact in evoking emotions and better telling a story, the organization said it decided to use this strategy on behalf of the communities, to reach out to their leaders in the government, organisations and people who could come to their aid.

The FCT State Coordinator for the Youth Digital Engagement Project, Mubarak Ekute said the Artistic Creation is part of the activities scheduled for the Youth Digital Engagement Project in the FCT.

 “The project is all about digital engagement using digital tools to engage duty bearers to ensure that they work for the people who voted them into the respective offices they hold,” he said. The organisation had earlier conducted research in selected five communities in the FCT which the digital engagement projects covered as samples to represent the FCT rural communities.

According to the state youth digital engagement coordinator, the research covered two communities from the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC)- Tungan-Ashere  and Gofidna while  Kilankwa, Leleyi Gwari and Leleyi Basa were picked from  Kwali Area Council.

He said the research sought out the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the communities especially, young persons, women and the girl-child in the communities.

Josephine Adokwu, State Champion, YDE FCT was among the team who carried out the artistic creation

“From our research, we have come out with finding the challenges facing these communities. After the research we discovered that the two major problems they are facing in these communities are the issue of unemployment and the issue of civic space most especially as related to women and girl-child who are left behind. We also had issues of climate change and gender-based violence. Part of our advocacy strategy is coming up with this artistic creation for us to paint the picture of the problems we found for the wider public to see what the communities are facing,” he said.

Ekute said his team had collected contents like videos, pictures which  would all be uploaded on  social media platforms such as facebook, instagram and twitter and would be rebroadcasted to ensure the contents reach the targeted audience to attract government assistance and others to the affected communities.

On the choice of the form of art to drive home their advocacy messages, he explained that the organisation believes in the powerful effect of the pictures which can evoke emotions.

“Even someone who is not educated can decipher the message being passed across. Seeing from the artistic presentation, he or she will be able to understand that this is the problem the communities are passing through. So, we think this artistic creation is a louder way of showing the public the problems of these communities,” he explained.

The FCT  Coordinator of Activista, a global youth network of Actionaid, Idris Yahaya supervises the art creation. Photo credit: Humanity Watch

The State Coordinator said the organisation had held radio programmes to drive home the points or messages, adding, “We are going to do a social media engagement to share these contents with the public on twitter, facebook and other medium like TV, online media and newspaper.”

“We’ve helped them identify those problems so, we want to make sure that the message reach any person responsible for ensuring these people live a normal life by acting on those information we shared,” he said as he called on government, other civil society organisations and well-meaning Nigerians to come to the aid of the suffering communities.

Also speaking, the FCT  Coordinator of Activista, a global youth network of Actionaid, Idris Yahaya said with the help of  an economist, data gathered  from the communities which are being used to create messages for the rest of the activities the organisation is carrying out carryout of which the artistic creation was one, were analyzed.

“We have about 25 messages already that we want to push out so we decided to pick two for this artistic creation, using images to explain, knowing fully well that a single  image creates more than a thousand words in our minds when we look at this.

“Our goal is to push them out on facebook, twitter and instagram and ask our members to share wide to reach different audiences so that it can reach the appropriate authorities that can bring these changes to the problem they are facing,” he said.

Maduka Sylvia, State Champion, YDE FCT was among the team who carried out the artistic creation

He emphasized that  findings from the research conducted in the communities showed that the major problem confronting the understudied communities is unemployment and hopes  that  subsequently, the social intervention programme will focus more on rural communities instead of the urban communities which have more opportunities than those in the rural communities.

“If government is doing a social intervention programme and one-out of 10 which means 10 percent of  young persons and girls in the communities get this, that means it is not  reaching the right people and secondly, their means of livelihood which is either farming, petty trading or handwork was badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic so,  if we can push these materials to the public and it reaches the government , NGOs and other humanitarians and they see them and go to the communities to help, we would have achieved our aim,” Yahaya said.

Credit: Report compiled by Josephine Ejeh