---
redirect_from: /2013/08/lagos-city-spending-party/
title: Lagos City Spending Party
authors:
- Oluseun Onigbinde
---
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.lagosstate.gov.ng/">Lagos</a> is the financial capital of Nigeria. With a population of over 17 million people over an area of 356,861 hectares, Lagos is responsible for over 70% of Nigeria’s non-oil revenue.  Taken as a country, Lagos GDP of $86.7bn exceeds that of Kenya, East Africa economy powerhouse. The administration of Lagos State since the advent of new democracy cycle of Nigeria in 1999 has been under the national opposition party, Action Congress of Nigeria.

<p dir="ltr">With rising revenues from taxes and less dependence on resource rent from the federal accounts, Lagos is one of the three states in Nigeria which puts its <a href="http://www.lagosstate.gov.ng/subpage.php?k=62">budget</a> online. Its <a href="http://www.lagosstate.gov.ng/debt_profile_lagosstate.pdf">financials</a> in big headers in terms of expenditure, revenue and debt over the last years has also been available online for citizens to access.

<p dir="ltr">At Global City Spending Party organised by Open Knowledge Foundation, <a href="http://yourbudgit.com/">BudgIT</a>, a Nigerian startup using creative technology to make data interesting, worked on Lagos released datasets. We combined our timeline framework with the <a href="http://openspending.org/">OpenSpending</a> tool to deliver what is very appealing. Using the Openspending tool was very important for the BudgIT team as it validates the recent capacity building project by OKFN which was funded by <a href="http://indigotrust.org.uk/2013/03/08/budgit-nigeria-making-budget-data-understandable/">Indigo Trust</a>.

<p dir="ltr">OUR VISUALIZATION

<p dir="ltr">We decided to build to show a yearly trend of Lagos revenue and expenditure datasets. The steps on the using the simple <a href="http://yourbudgit.com/openlagos/">visualization</a> are given below:

<ol>
<li>
<p dir="ltr">Using the timeline within the PHP framework, users have the ability to see the Lagos revenues and expenditure over a period of years. <img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/5DAqZXZwNq4xgf7MA1W1nze2arp8xfDtkyRnS26zexkCwAfdHvUo2ucQQVC5l1OoG8e64uj85dHY2goTAz102Qq4DpnYvH5DkRqjVIkSukhse4hVVziu68LSmAbn1wqOjIk" alt="" width="624px;" height="186px;" />

</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>
<p dir="ltr">On click of the timeline, users can see the relative sizes of the revenue and expenditure. <img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/RPWko3d14yjHyJdDwqsziYM1PeS_vnlmhiv_y41rTqtJUEJ4S3zVvEX34FTDY5yVpkPqPE3zoY98zhkRwsdnvI4Iaj3s9bjKbv8hiaQymhwUkWqVn0DwPzLX9wmnKDoBIQk" alt="" width="545px;" height="247px;" />

</li>
</ol>
&nbsp;

<p dir="ltr">3. With an above instruction to click on the circle, users can peer at the data visualized with OpenSpending tool.<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/toLbEV0mWqoHwaWwC5plnB6CTNIeVjTB9wP0o1QAOPBn4osBRXkPqvT3zgquGuxvCyqzZv0PZDU10DwYP4TnRlRHHVGCFKnkZccVk2ZHH7UtO6jTOxsaBc4WIdoo3k4xMJ4" alt="" width="624px;" height="245px;" />

<p dir="ltr">Using a PHP framework with code available at <a href="https://github.com/olamieUsman/openlagos">https://github.com/olamieUsman/openlagos</a>, the BudgIT team used a timeline framework to visualise the years and wrap the OpenSpending platform around the relatively sized bubbles.

<p dir="ltr">The application built exclusively by the BudgIT team over a weekend is an ongoing approach to make data more friendly, accessible and transparent for citizens across the literacy span. BudgIT maps  the array of tools such as desktop web, mobile web, sms, apps, infographics, interactive applications, print, radio, television, games and community groups for every specific access class. We continuously seek <a href="http://yourbudgit.com/index.php/support">support</a> of global organisations in making the Nigerian budget simple and understandable for every Nigerian citizen.

