The coming 2015 general elections in Nigeria is arguably the most talked about subject in the country today with the activities and actions of political parties and other involved generating lots of media attention. Following this trend also is a Nigerian technology startup incubated at IdeaHub and Cc-HUB, Gboza Gbosa Technology Limited with the launch of Stomach Infrastructure and SpeaksForUs.
Stomachinfrastructure.com is an online media platform that takes a satirical look at the political life in Nigeria using blogs and multimedia and backing them with social newsfeeds and statistics. The comics culled from various local attributable magazines world for a light hearted introduction to the platform, blogs are penned by various political writers in and out of the country. The insights, covering the presidency, gubernatorial, senate, house and state assemblies, are made up of related twitter statistics, social newsfeeds, real time news, and polls.
SpeaksForUs on the other hand provides social campaigners with the ability to raise funds for their cause using targeted crowd-sourced eCommerce. Targeted crowd-sourced eCommerce allows campaigners to create wishlists of goods such as branded merchandise like t-shirts, posters, face caps, and mugs that they can utilize to run the campaign. These wishlists are then sent to their sponsors and supporters, so that they can financially support the campaign, by purchasing goods and services from the list for the campaigner, while knowing exactly how their financial support was used.
For organizations or individual campaigners that do not have an internet presence, SpeaksForUs also provides free social media equipped websites that provide online tools to allow full engagement in advocacy issues. All the goods in the SpeaksForUs shop are locally sourced, thereby providing trade to local businesses employing local people. Local businesses can sign up to become vendors, using the online registration process that takes just a few minutes.
Mr Ade Atobatele, of Gboza Gbosa Technology Limited, said “we are launching SpeaksForUs during the 2015 political season to assist the almost 10,000 aspirants like Jimi Agbaje, Gen. Buhari, Jonathan Goodluck, and others from the grassroots to the federal level raise funds for their forthcoming campaigns”.
“This is necessary for times like this…Giving equal opportunities to every party to reach the public” – Biola Agbaje, the wife of the Lagos state gubernatorial aspirant, Jimi Agbaje.
Bisi Alaka currently running for senate in Oyo central under Accord party was so impressed with SpeaksForUs that he immediately signed on.
During live events Stomach Infrastructure will use hashtags to track real life events of politicians like Akinwunmi Ambode, Jimi Agbaje, Gen. Buhari, Jonathan Goodluck, and many others. Mr Atobatele also stated that he is hoping stomach infrastructure would educate and keep the public informed about the Nigerian political process starting with the 2015 elections, in a lighthearted but verifiable manner.
