Doing Accountability Differently - Voice to the People, Nigeria

Exploring practice and results of Christian Aid’s Voice to the People Programme in Anambra State, Nigeria.

Enhancing accountable governance has long been a major concern of development programming, but matching this interest with change that is both sustainable and replicable at multiple levels has not been easily achieved.

Recent studies suggest that accountability initiatives will only work if they take local power relations into account, and that the limited traction attained to date could be kick-started with a strategy geared towards vertically integrated accountability.

To that end, Voice to the People (V2P) has taken a power-aware approach that enabled collaboration amongst community-level, local government and state-level actors and vertical integration of advances at each stage, making it an instructive case study for replicating and scaling up effective accountability programming.

Drawing on focus groups and interviews with key informants and a review of project documents, this paper reflects on the lessons that can be learned from V2P, a programme funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and implemented by Christian Aid in partnership with local organisations in Anambra State, Nigeria.