Communication Professor Olumuyiwa Popoola has called for data-driven reporting and transparent monitoring of public projects across Nigeria’s 774 local government areas to strengthen accountability and accelerate grassroots development.

Popoola made the call while outlining a practical agenda for the Nigeria Local Government News (NLGN) Development Communication Media Ecosystem, launched to promote development communication, citizen participation and public accountability.

The former Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Ajayi Crowther of University, who was a virtual speaker, said NLGN should establish a baseline of local development information, identify critical information gaps and prioritise issues according to the needs of communities rather than the visibility of public officials or locations.

He identified rural healthcare, agricultural productivity, education, water and sanitation, employment, local enterprise, environmental management and infrastructure as areas requiring sustained media attention, depending on evidence of local needs.

The professor advocated a consistent project-monitoring framework through which selected public projects would be tracked from implementation to completion and, where feasible, assessed to determine whether they were delivering their intended services.

He said such monitoring should draw on official records, site visits, community testimony and other relevant independent sources.

Popoola also urged NLGN to strengthen citizens’ capacity to participate in governance by providing information on how they could attend public meetings, submit petitions, access available public records, report service-delivery problems and engage the appropriate authorities.

He stressed that the impact of development communication should be measured not only by audience reach, website traffic or social media engagement, but also by improvements in public understanding, citizen participation and institutional responsiveness.

The professor proposed four categories of indicators for assessing NLGN’s performance: reach and access; public understanding and participation; institutional responsiveness and accountability; and contributions to development outcomes.

Under the framework, the platform would assess the communities and population groups reached, the accessibility of its reports in relevant local languages, citizens’ involvement in discussions and the responses of public institutions to documented concerns.

He also urged NLGN to document cases in which information helped citizens access public services, prompted institutions to address implementation problems or enabled communities to adopt effective development initiatives.

However, Popoola cautioned against attributing every development outcome to media interventions, noting that results could also depend on funding, institutional capacity, political decisions, community cooperation and wider economic conditions.

He said NLGN should distinguish between activities it undertakes, outcomes to which it contributes and changes that can reasonably be attributed to its interventions.

The professor identified limited access to reliable local data, inadequate communication infrastructure, language barriers, resource constraints, political pressure, misinformation and unequal access to digital technologies as potential challenges to the initiative.

He called on the organisation to uphold editorial independence, verify official information, investigate community allegations, provide relevant parties with opportunities to respond and correct errors transparently.

Popoola said the platform’s success should ultimately be measured by the quality of information available to citizens, the strength of community participation, the responsiveness of public institutions and its demonstrable contribution to improving lives across Nigeria’s local government areas.