Democracy Is A Product.

[Music]

so in nigeria elections are either

bought

or stolen plato plumo

there’s no such thing as a free and fair

election it’s been that way

my whole life it’s been that way since

independence and so whenever we talk

about the civic space

and the dysfunction in the civic space

in nigeria we talk about elections

and you have so many different people

who keep thinking about new ways

better ways to run elections or ways to

stop elections from being stolen or

bought

and a lot of the time the the the

conversations turn to tech

a lot of people believe that the answer

is going to be a tech product in some

way

some software some app that can stop

elections being stolen

but you can’t have an online solution to

an offline

problem and that’s where it often get

goes wrong

so let me give you an example back in

2011

a political party was trying to protect

its votes so they came to me

and asked me to design a vote counting

application for them

and here’s how it works pretty

straightforward so there are 3 000

polling stations in that state and the

party has an

agent in each polling station on

election day

now when the voting is done

and the votes are counted that polling

agent takes their phone

and types in the result from the station

and uploads it to our server and then

the server

adds up all these results from all 3 000

stations

and figures out the vote who’s won and

who’s lost

the idea was once you have that result

if the election officials announce a

false result

trying to steal the election you now

have the evidence

to counter them so here’s what happened

on election day

it worked like a charm within 30 minutes

of the election being over the votes

being counted

the party had all the results from all

across the state

now we all know however that there’s a

difference between

knowing the results and having an

official announcement of the results

if you’ve been following the american

election you know exactly what i mean

so to get an official result in nigeria

here’s what needs to happen

those votes have to be written down at

the polling station

by the election official on paper and

then those paper results

are sent physically to another place

called the collision center

at the collision center they add up all

the results and write them down again on

paper

and then they announce that as the

official result

but it’s simple math going on at the

coalition center it’s just a formality

right wrong

because here’s what happened at the

coalition centers it’s the same thing

that happens there

every election day armed men showed up

they took over the coalition centers

they drove away all the party agents

and then they sat down with the election

officials and wrote

new results fake results and that’s what

god announced

election over there is no app

for that and that’s why

so many of the solutions people bring

for the election problem

fail they depend on online solutions for

offline problems

eight years later 2019

groups of women in that state said

they’re not making the same mistake

they said it’s clear that apps

and software platforms can’t solve that

collision center problem

so they decided to try an offline

solution

so what did they do on election day 2019

after counting their votes at the

polling station these women marched

in their hundreds in their thousands

through the coalition centers they

occupied the coalition centers

and when the armed men showed up at the

coalition centers

these women refused to move they looked

the armed men in the eye

and said shoot us if you want to steal

this election

shoot your mothers shoot your daughters

shoot your sisters

and guess what happened the iron men

blinked they couldn’t shoot them

they backed off and so

the official results ended up being the

real results

election over they didn’t need an app

for that

because they were the app

and that’s the difference between

solutions that work and solutions that

don’t

the women in 2019 succeeded where the

app in 2011 failed

because they approached the problem

that problem with democracy the way

a product manager approaches a problem

with an

app he designed they applied

problem-based thinking instead of

solution based thinking what’s the

difference

is the difference between saying my

client needs

a word processor app and saying my

client needs a way to write stuff down

because when you say the second way you

know that a way to write stuff down

could be an app or it could be a pen and

paper

or a sharpie and a whiteboard or it

could be a tattoo gun

and their skin how do you choose

you choose a solution based on exactly

what the client’s pain points are

so when you choose an

app for securing your clients election

and you don’t pay attention to the fact

that the pain point is actually

i’m men in a coalition center you are

being

solution based instead of problem based

all over the world right now

young people are saying enough

they are addressing the issues in their

civic space all the dysfunction

and they’re saying we want better

democracies for ourselves

will they succeed it depends

it depends on whether they’re going to

apply product

thinking to the situation or if they’re

simply going to say

let’s build an app nsars

used solution ensares used

product based thinking and that’s why it

succeeded

all my life protests in nigeria have

failed

they don’t last and they don’t scale why

because

protesters tend to go

home very early no protests last more

than a few days why

because protesters go home because

they’re hungry

or protesters go home because of police

brutality

or protesters go home because they get

arrested and nobody wants to go to jail

and they can’t trust the protest leaders

to come through for them

nsa solved all of those problems

how did they do it they provided food

for protesters

out in the streets that was a new

feature they provided medical aid for

protesters who got beaten up by the

police

also a new feature they provided legal

aid for protesters

who were arrested and detained illegally

also a new feature

so now as a protester you know

that your leaders have your back that

keeps you out on the streets

and they did all this through

crowdfunding also a new feature

and every step of the way they accounted

for

every dollar and every naira donated

accountability and trust very new

feature

nigerians were not used to that in the

public space

and that trust deficit is the biggest

reason why

things don’t work is the biggest reason

why movements fail

so you want to change nigeria or your

own country

you have all these ideas for reform you

want to improve the way governance works

well congratulations you just became the

founder of a startup

that wants to disrupt governance by

competing with government

but it’s not an easy job if you’re going

to succeed

you need to provide one thing that

government has failed to do

trust

we talked about elections being stolen

or bought

i’ve told you how they’re stolen now let

me tell you why they are bought

why are people willing to sell their

votes they sell their votes because

they can’t trust politicians to deliver

every election every campaign season

politicians talk to nigerians

and promise them the world but nigerians

have learned

that after the election they will never

see these people again

and none of the promises will be kept

and so nigerians very rationally have

decided

instead of voting based on these

promises let me

work based on what this politician will

give me now

and so they sell their votes to the

highest bidder if you want to change

that

you address the pain point you don’t

condemn them for selling their vote

but you figure out why they’re doing it

and give them an alternative

in this case it would mean giving them a

track record

of why they should vote for whoever you

think they should vote for

people who want to overcome the trust

deficit

and earn the votes of nigerians or

anybody

else have to show them

a track record you have to adopt the

nsars model for example

of providing services before you come to

them

so that you’re no longer saying to them

vote for me and i will do

you’re saying vote for me because i have

done

now some will say why should a private

citizen provide services

that’s government’s job and i agree

but here’s the thing look at the

citizen like a user of an app

you don’t get a user to use your app

by guilting them you get them to use

your app by solving a problem they have

it’s a buyer’s market you don’t make the

market adjust to you

you adjust to the market and i think

that’s the heart of product-based

thinking and if

more reformers

approach the civic space problem with

pro with

product thinking with problem-based

thinking rather than solution-based

thinking

i think we will end up building far

fewer apps

and far more communities thank you