By Samuel Akpan
In a major boost for grassroots government accountability, Agora Policy has unveiled two digital platforms aimed at opening up policy documents and the financial data of Nigeria’s 774 local councils to public scrutiny.
The launch coincided with the graduation of the think tank’s second cohort of Policy Writing Fellows.
Through its flagship Policy Writing Fellowship, Agora Policy trains competitively selected mid-career professionals, equipping them with the critical skills needed to research and draft compelling, data-driven policy papers.
Special Adviser to the President on Policy Coordination and Head of the Central Results Delivery Coordination Unit, Hadiza Bala Usman, noted the deeper purpose of policy work.
“Policy writing is not merely a technical exercise. It is a public responsibility. It is one of the instruments through which societies define their problems, debate their options, clarify their priorities and organise action for the common good,” she said.
She linked the quality of thinking to the quality of results on the ground, saying: “In governance, the quality of policy thinking often shapes the quality of policy outcomes. A poorly defined problem will usually produce a weak intervention.
“A policy proposal that does not understand context, institutions, fiscal realities, implementation capacity and citizen experience may be impressive in form, but limited in impact.”
The presidential aide pointed out Nigeria’s recurring implementation challenge.
According to her, Nigeria does not suffer from a shortage of ideas. Across sectors, we have had plans, strategies, committees, reports, white papers and reform proposals.
“The more difficult task has always been to convert ideas into priorities, priorities into institutions, institutions into implementation, and implementation into measurable improvements in the lives of citizens. This is the central challenge of governance,” she noted.
She highlighted the new National Policy Coordination Framework developed to drive coherence across ongoing reforms.
The orgarnizer of the programme, Doyinsola Wale-Banmore stated: “The fellowship and the portals are part of the series of activities under Policy Support, Deepening and Engagement (PSDE) project, an initiative of Agora Policy implemented to strengthen evidence-driven and participatory approaches to policymaking and governance in the country and supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.”
Wale-Banmore further detailed the fellowship’s output, saying in its second year, the Policy Writing Fellowship is Agora Policy’s flagship intervention introduced to enhance the capacity of competitively-selected mid-career professionals to conceive, research and write compelling and impactful policy papers.
“The graduating fellows have completed an intensive, four-month training that culminated in individual policy papers produced under the direction of their assigned supervisors.
“The policy papers by the graduating fellows cover a diverse set of topics, ranging from artificial intelligence, disease-containment strategies, air quality, food security, to job creation, gender equity, and industrial policy,” Wale-Banmore noted.
Persecondnews correspondent at the launch reports that the event, held at the Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa (CSEA) in Mabushi, Abuja, recorded strong completion numbers – 22 out of 25 fellows selected from more than 800 applicants finished the programme, a nearly 90 per cent success rate.
The Policy Registry offers a central, AI-enabled searchable home for policy documents, reports, frameworks and strategies to support research and institutional memory.
The companion Local Governance Accountability Portal gives public access to FAAC allocations, profiles and elected officials across all 774 local government areas, complete with data visualisation tools.
It was developed with The Cable, the Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Public Integrity and the Punch Media Foundation.
Founder and Executive Director of Agora Policy, Waziri Adio, highlighted the funding paradox at the local level.
“If we are really interested in good governance and development in this country, we can’t continue to ignore what is going on in our local councils. … Enormous resources are pouring into our LGAs, especially in the last three years.
“From FAAC alone, the least allocation to an LGA is about N500m monthly. Alimosho LGA received N4.9 billion for January 2026 alone. One of the best resourced local councils in the world in terms of percentage of total government revenue, only after Switzerland,” he observed.
He described the current accountability gap and the new portal’s purpose, pointing out: “But our LGAs are almost a black hole, and as a result where the government should be closest to the people, where govt should be felt the most, is where it is absent the most.
“The LGA portal is our humble contribution to changing the direction of travel: designed to empower citizens, civic group, the media and others with the tools to actively hold those in charge at the local level to account.
“Data is important, but agency is more important. Data without agency is just a set of numbers.”
Executive Chairman of the Code of Conduct Bureau, Dr. Abdullahi Usman Bello, welcomed the LGA Portal as a practical tool for integrity at the grassroots.
He said: “The LGA Portal, which provides free access to financial allocations to local councils from 1999 to date, together with council profiles and the names of elected officials, is a powerful instrument for promoting transparency and accountability at the grassroots level.
“This portal will empower citizens, researchers, journalists, and civic actors to monitor public resources and demand better service delivery — directly supporting our collective efforts to entrench integrity and ethical conduct in public service.”
Bello, who also shared fresh updates from his agency’s enforcement work, said as part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen integrity and accountability in public service, the Code of Conduct Bureau has completed verification of asset declarations for high-risk public servants.
This exercise, he noted, covered 19 ministers, 37 permanent secretaries, 20 heads of agencies, and 32 other high-risk officials.
“Just yesterday we arraigned the Chief of Staff to a state governor before the Tribunal.
“These actions demonstrate our firm resolve to hold public officers accountable regardless of their position or status,” he disclosed, noting that the new Online Asset and Liabilities Declaration System is now fully developed and ready for deployment.
The graduating fellows, who produced policy papers on pressing national issues under expert supervision, were urged to apply their new skills to strengthen institutions at every level.
With the twin platforms now live and a fresh cohort of trained policy minds entering the system, the event signals a practical step from ideas on paper to measurable improvements in how governance works for ordinary citizens.