Democracy Is A Product.
[Music]
uh
[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