The
co-founder of ‘Follow The Money’ initiative, Hamzat Lawal, is due to arrive in
The Gambia today, Tuesday.
Follow
The Money is a Nigerian youth-led project that seeks to advocate for the
efficient use of public funds and thus promote good governance. It is an initiative of Connected Development (CODE), founded by Hamzat Lawal and Oludotun Babayemi.
Mr
Lawal’s visit is aimed at, among others, strengthening and training the
officials and volunteers of the already established Follow The Money chapter in
The Gambia.
The
country coordinator of Follow The Money Gambia chapter, Marr Nyang, said
Lawal’s visit would ensure that a strong foundation is built for the advocacy
of The Gambia chapter in its strive to promote effective governance.
Marr
said: “Lawal is coming to train Follow The Money members in Gambia on how to
track public funds and make sure they are being used as designed.
“Gambians
will be able to learn best practices used in Nigeria to fight against
corruption and promote hard-to-reach community development.”
According
to Mr Marr Lawal is a great young leader doing a great job in Africa, saying
young Gambians should make the best use of the Nigerian’s short stay.
Follow
The Money (FTM) Mission
The
nonpartisan, nonprofit National Institute on Money in State Politics promotes
an accountable democracy by compiling comprehensive campaign-donor, lobbyist,
and other information from government disclosure agencies nationwide and making
it freely available.
The
institute researches and archives a 50-state federal/state database of
contributions documenting $50+ billion, plus more than 2 million state
lobbyist-client relationships that are registered annually.
Recent
expansions include selected local-level data, collecting independent spending
reports for federal campaigns and in 31 states, and lobbying spending in 20
states.
