Group creates backup application for victims of police brutality
[FILES] Police. Photo/facebook/IAOkowa/
To curtail police brutality, the Centre for Civic Citizens Welfare and Community Development Africa (CWCDA) in partnership with the Open Society Initiation of West Africa (OSIWA), has created a GPS enabled mobile application, BackUp, to serve as an alerting system for victims of police brutality.
In a statement yesterday, CWCDA Managing Partner, Olajide Abiose said BackUp was created to cast a spotlight on the dangers of police brutality, improve incident reporting, collect viable data and rally public interest for victims.
Abiose added that this was in the wake of the ENDSARS protest of 2020 and the recent spike in cases of police brutality in various states of Nigeria.
He said: “The mission of the CWCDA is to accelerate social impact through technology and innovation, therefore the Backup project aims to leverage technology for increasing police accountability and ultimately spurring policy changes.
“Backup works by enabling victims to share live locations and texts to emergency contacts, personal social media accounts or to civil societies who are at the forefront of the fight against human rights violation.”
Over the years, the foundation is known to have unveiled other mobile solutions such as UNSUB, a mobile application for gender-based violence reporting and ENGAGE, a crowdsourcing platform that uses new technologies to allow citizens to freely call on the government to take actions in areas they would love to see changes.
“Likewise, RISE, a platform that connects people in need to people of means in Nigeria has recorded great success since its launch.
Lastly, testing of the BACKUP App will commence soon, after which the official launch of the mobile application will be made available to the general public. The relevance of a technological solution for police brutality could not have come at a better time, therefore the CWCDA applauds the OSIWA for its lifelong partnership and commitment to tackling social issues.”
