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In September 2023, the House of Representatives published its legislative agenda, committing to pass the Electronic Surveillance and Communications Privacy Bill, a landmark piece of legislation designed to codify privacy rights into law and curb unlawful surveillance of Nigerian citizens. The bill was expected to regulate wiretapping, interception of electronic data, and the activities of intelligence agencies operating in the shadows. Two years passed. No bill. No debate. No explanation.
When the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), one of Nigeria's foremost investigative journalism organisations, set out to hold the House of Representatives accountable for this promise, they turned to multiple bill tracking platforms to verify whether the commitment had been honoured.
AdvoKC Foundation's Promise Tracker was among the key platforms FIJ consulted in the course of their investigation.
What they found confirmed what Promise Tracker's data had already documented: the promise to pass the Electronic Surveillance and Communications Privacy Bill had not been passed. It had not been publicly considered. It had simply disappeared from the legislative process, with no accountability and no explanation offered to the Nigerian public whose privacy rights hung in the balance.
FIJ's investigation, published and widely circulated, cited Promise Tracker alongside other major tracking platforms, including the National Assembly Library Trust Fund Bill Tracker and platforms linked to the National Assembly and the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, as evidence of the bill's absence from Nigeria's legislative record.
The right to privacy is not a privilege. For millions of Nigerians — activists, journalists, women fleeing domestic violence, young people organising for change — the absence of legal protection against unlawful surveillance is not an abstract policy gap. It is a daily vulnerability.
When elected representatives make a public commitment to protect citizens and then quietly abandon it, the consequences are real. And when no one is watching, those consequences go unaddressed. This is precisely why Promise Tracker exists.
By maintaining an accurate, publicly accessible, and independently verified record of legislative promises, AdvoKC Foundation's Promise Tracker gave FIJ the foundation it needed to publish a compelling, fact-based accountability story that reached thousands of Nigerians.
This collaboration between civic technology and investigative journalism demonstrates what becomes possible when data is made accessible, trustworthy, and actionable:
Democracy does not only happen in chambers and committee rooms. It happens when citizens have access to the tools and information they need to demand better. Promise Tracker is one of those tools, and this investigation is proof that when civic data is taken seriously, it has the power to drive real accountability.
The Electronic Surveillance and Communications Privacy Bill has not yet been passed. But thanks to Promise Tracker and the journalists who used it, Nigerians now know that, and the House of Representatives knows they are being watched.
Read FIJ's full investigation: https://fij.ng/article/reps-have-no-act-2-years-after-pledging-to-regulate-spying-on-citizens/ Track the Electronic Surveillance and Communications Privacy Bill on the Promise Tracker: https://www.promisetracker.ng/blog/ea83a0c7-4ac6-4d84-9857-84401bd435b4