“I have been receiving text messages from an organization under the auspices of Network for Good Governance (N4GG) asking me to check newspapers for information relating to good governance. How they got my telephone number remains a mystery. The good thing about them is that their activities have kept me abreast of issues relating to governance in Nigeria,” 75 years old Onome Akpokrise, a farmer living in a rural area of Delta State, disclosed.
Corroborating Akpokrise’s view, a Lagos lawyer and politician, Alhaji Isa Clark, wondered aloud while with his learned colleagues at the Lagos State High Court, Ikeja when he received an alert from N4GG asking him to read a Nigerian newspaper on good government. “The organizers of N4GG are doing a good job with their regular SMS alerts informing me of daily news on governance. Their monitoring activities on good governance will no doubt keep our rulers on their toes. It is a good method of check and balance.”
These two Nigerians are among millions of Nigerians who receive SMS alerts almost on daily basis from a non-government organization under the aegis of Network for Good Governance (N4GG) whose mission is to monitor good governance and enlighten the masses on effectiveness of governance or otherwise through SMS alert, newspaper publications and the electronic media.
N4GG carries out its mandate through the Global Communication System (GSM) technology alerts and the mainstream media to disseminate information to the masses in rural, urban or the Diaspora on the activities of government.
The group is the brainchild of Hon. Sunny Onuesoke, a former governorship aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2007. Its objectives is to commend and improve governmental administration by seeking opinions from the masses and relating them to the administrative system.
Onuesoke adopted the idea from a former South African President, the late Nelson Mandela, who used it to fight against bad governance and election in South Africa after he was released from prison. To start off, Onuesoke brought technocrats and academicians both from within and in Diaspora, together. After brainstorming, they designed a test of reference, the purpose and the vision of the organization. The idea behind it is purely to monitor good governance as well as to enlighten and equip the masses through the social and electronic media.
The organization is not a Nigerian affair alone. Onuesoke is the Country Director of the organization in Nigeria. The Board of Director is headed by a French activist, while a black American, Michael Egi, a staunch lover of Martin Luther King, is a key sponsor of the organization in America.
N4GG has offices in the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria with its headquarters located in Warri, Delta State. The offices are equipped with the state-of-the-art facilitates including computerization system linked to internet for collation and immediate dissemination of information to the masses. The equipment are manned by specialists made up of 17 staff, 27 volunteers and 60 members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
What welcomes a first time visitor to the headquarters are large bill boards carrying the pictures of President Goodluck Jonathan and Vice President Namani Sambo with the inscriptions, “ N4GG Adopts Goodluck Jonathan and Namadi Sambo for 2015”, ”GEJ for 2015” and “N4GG Endorses Jonathan for 2015” among others.
Jonathan and Sambo portraits are positioned in every nook and cranny of the offices.
Explaining the support for Jonathan in 2015, N4GG Country Director, Onuesoke, who said the group sends about 10 million SMS alerts to the masses every day, disclosed that they are supporting the Jonathan administration because it encourages transparency.
“We encourage government that is transparent. We decided to support President Goodluck Jonathan’s government because of its transparency, because of its transformational agenda, because of its posture of accountability, touching the people with every form of infrastructural projects. President Goodluck Jonathan government is on track with its transformational agenda. I score his achievements 75 percent. Saboteurs who do want him to succeed and who are jealous of his antecedents try to destroy all his achievements. When we see a leader that is transparent, we give him media support, moral support and value support.
“It is not only in Nigeria that we support good governance. We are doing so to the Zuma government in South-Africa. We partner with some American political opinion poll groups. We do it in Ghana. We are in everywhere in Africa. We are trans-national. We are in support of the current leaders because we think what they are doing is real. People think because we have our operational base in Nigeria; so all we do is about Nigeria. No, we are in the United States. If Obama is doing a good thing in America, we come up with our support. Like the Obama Medicare project in America, we support that. But a lot of people do not know that. We have our branch in Massachusetts”.
Throwing more light on why the organization had become the toast of the masses in term of information collation, dissemination and enlightenment on good governance, Onuesoke stated, “We use send GSM alerts to get people acquainted because we found out that it is not everybody that could afford a hard copy newspaper or a cable transmitter. So what we did was that we decided to break down our information spread to the barest minimum so that everyone in the rural area should be acquainted with GSM test messages about the function of good governance.”
In an attempt to get further to the people, N4GG is to establish a radio which would go on air soonest. There are also plans to establish a television station that will run 24 hours daily.
On funding, Onuesoke revealed he committed his little money into the project, but quickly added that volunteers are also helping.
“Donations keep coming from volunteers and technocrats. We have a lot of guys who volunteer to give us fund to monitor good governance so as to get the people informed. We have got a lot of sponsors from all over the place. We do not know how the funds come. People just come and provide computers, T-shirts, bill boards and other amenities. But the question is that we do not know what makes us thick and what makes us great. It is an evolutionary process.”
