The Open Knowledge Development Initiative (OKDI) on Saturday launched a workshop to co-create a Digital Civic Protection Toolkit aimed at strengthening the digital safety of civil society organisations and civic actors across Nigeria’s Northeast.
The workshop, held in Gombe State, is part of the project titled “Digital Resilience and Protection for Civic Actors in Northeast Nigeria” and is themed “Co-Creation of a Digital Civic Protection Toolkit.”
The initiative is being implemented with support from CIVICUS under the Digital Democracy Initiative to enhance the digital resilience of civil society organisations, activists, and youth groups in the region.
Speaking in an interview, the Executive Director of OKDI and Project Lead for the Digital Resilience Project, Adamu Usman Garko, said the programme is focused on jointly developing a bilingual digital protection toolkit for civic actors.
“The toolkit is a bilingual tool that will support organisations and civic actors to safeguard themselves on the digital interface. Our organisation, OKDI, is implementing this project for the northeastern part of Nigeria, where we are targeting 15 organisations, as well as activists and youth groups,” Garko said.
He explained that the toolkit would be produced in both English and Hausa to make it accessible to a wider audience.
“The reason we are creating the toolkit in both English and Hausa is because we understand that we now live in a digital world. Previously, rights violations were mostly physical. But with the evolution of digital platforms, many civil society actors are now subjected to threats, phishing, and online harassment. That is why we are creating a toolkit that will provide best safeguarding practices in English and Hausa to help them protect themselves online,” he added.
On why the project is focused on the Northeast, Garko said the region was selected because of OKDI’s operational presence, while expressing hope that the initiative would be expanded nationwide.
“For a start, our organisation is primarily based in Gombe State and most of our operations are in the northeastern part of the country. However, this is the first phase of the project, and our intention is that after the Northeast, we will use the same model to reach other regions of the country.”
He noted that the toolkit is only one component of a broader digital resilience project designed to strengthen the capacity of civic organisations.
“Basically, the toolkit creation is just a segment of the project. We conducted a digital security assessment for over 100 organisations in the northeastern part of the country and we are creating tailored risk reports for 15 organisations based on the data they provided on their vulnerabilities.
“We also have digital security and well-being training that we will be conducting later in July, where we will select representatives of the 15 organisations in Gombe for sessions on digital security and well-being. We also have a virtual security clinic for people we cannot reach physically, so we will be conducting virtual clinics for them.
“In addition, we have public awareness because we understand that there are hard-to-reach communities in the Northeast, and radio is a powerful means of reaching them. So, we are also creating awareness through radio,” he said.