Help Build the South-West Geo Data Intelligence Platform

My name is Oluwaseyi, and I want to show you something remarkable. We are currently making this platform with an interactive map where every pin represents a verified incident: infrastructure damage, civilian casualties, military movements. Each pin links to photos, videos, satellite imagery, and detailed documentation. Anyone can click on any location and see exactly what happened there, when it happened, and the evidence proving it.

This isn't journalism in the traditional sense. It's verified, crowdsourced intelligence made accessible to everyone. Researchers use it. Journalists use it. International courts use it as evidence. Policymakers use it to understand ground reality. And ordinary citizens use it to know the truth about what's happening in their country.

We are Making Nigeria's South‑West region but adapted for our context: tracking development projects, mapping infrastructure, documenting government performance, monitoring environmental changes, and creating a permanent, verified record of our region's evolution.

How The Platform Works And What We're Adapting

The Nigerian map shows color-coded pins across the south west region. Green means military equipment movement. Red means civilian casualties or attacks. Each pin is verified through geolocation (confirming exact location using satellite imagery and landmarks) and chronolocation (confirming exact date and time). Click any pin and you see the source video or photo from social media, the verification details, and a description of what happened.

The platform is essentially "a living document" that updates continuously as new verified information comes in, creating an evidentiary database that could be used in courts. For Nigeria, this has been crucial for documenting war crimes and holding bad actors accountable.

Our South-West platform will ba able to track different things:

• Infrastructure mapping: Every hospital, school, police station, market, and public facility pinned with current status (operational, under construction, abandoned, non-existent)
• Development project tracking: Government promises a new road? We pin it. Construction starts? We update it. Project completes? We verify it. Project abandoned? We document it.
• Incident documentation: Flooding events, building collapses, traffic accidents, security incidents — all verified, timestamped, and mapped
• Environmental monitoring: Erosion sites, illegal dumping, deforestation, urban sprawl — tracked over time with satellite imagery
• Service delivery verification: Citizens report broken streetlights, potholes, water shortages — creating accountability pressure through documentation

The map gives Nigerians verified truth about what's happening in their country, majorly around the South-West region with verified truth about what's happening in our region from infrastructure to governance to development.

The Power of Color-Coded, Searchable Intelligence

This map uses different colored pins to isolate specific categories. You can search by date, specific location, or incident type. The map is filterable and searchable, making massive amounts of information instantly accessible.

• Blue pins = Healthcare facilities (click to see operational status, services available, equipment condition)
• Green pins = Educational institutions (enrollment numbers, infrastructure status, teacher-student ratios)
• Orange pins = Road and transportation projects (budget, timeline, completion percentage, contractor details)
• Red pins = Incidents requiring attention (infrastructure failures, environmental hazards, service gaps)
• Purple pins = Market and economic infrastructure (operational hours, facilities, accessibility)

Want to see all abandoned road projects in Oyo State from 2020-2025? Filter and click. Need to find the nearest functional healthcare center with maternity services? Search and navigate. Researching patterns of flooding in Lagos? View time-series data showing every recorded flood event with photos and impact documentation.

Verification: The Foundation of Trust

Our methodology works because every piece of content undergoes rigorous verification. Teams verify events and place them into an evidentiary database. All contributions are vetted by trained researchers. This is why international courts would accept the data as evidence.

Which is why the verification process is up to standard:

Multi-Source Verification Process

• Geolocation: Every infrastructure point or incident must be confirmed using satellite imagery (Google Earth, Sentinel satellites), street view data, and landmark cross-referencing
• Visual evidence: Photos and videos with metadata intact (location stamps, date stamps, device information)
• Official data cross-check: Comparing citizen reports against government databases, budget documents, and official announcements
• Community validation: Local teams in each state reviewing submissions from their areas before publication
• Timestamp verification: Confirming when events occurred using shadows in photos, weather data, and other chronolocation techniques

Nothing appears on the public map until it passes all verification checks. Every pin shows its sources, verification date, and confidence level.

Real-World Use Cases: How This Changes Everything

For Investigative Journalists

Southwest map is "aimed at journalists" providing them with verified, archived material they can reference in reporting. Instead of spending weeks tracking down information, journalists get instant access to verified regional intelligence.

Imagine investigating a governor's claim of building 50 new primary healthcare centers. Open our map, filter for "PHC + construction date 2024", and instantly see which ones exist, which are operational, which are empty shells, and which were never built. Each pin links to photos, GPS coordinates, construction timelines, and budget allocations.

Investigating corruption in road contracts? See every road project in a state, compare promised vs actual completion, identify patterns in contractor awards, and document the evidence visually with before/after satellite imagery.

For State Governments and Development Planners

Most state governments don't have accurate, real-time data about their own infrastructure. Our platform becomes their intelligence dashboard. See healthcare deserts immediately areas with high population but no nearby facilities. Identify school infrastructure gaps. Track rural road connectivity. Monitor urban sprawl patterns.

Budget allocation becomes evidence-based. Instead of political horse-trading, see exactly where investments will have maximum impact. Track implementation progress across all sectors simultaneously. Identify service delivery failures before they become crises.

For Academic Researchers

Bellingcat's database is archived "for future use by researchers, reporters as well as justice and accountability bodies". The South-West platform becomes a research goldmine verified regional datasets updated continuously.

Study urban growth patterns across multiple cities simultaneously. Correlate infrastructure development with economic indicators. Analyze healthcare access inequality using spatial data. Map environmental degradation over time. Research how government spending translates to actual development outcomes.

What used to take months of fieldwork and data collection now takes hours of analysis.

For Businesses and Investors

A logistics company planning distribution networks can see real-time road conditions, identify infrastructure bottlenecks, and optimize routes based on verified data. A healthcare investor can identify underserved markets with precision showing population density, competing facilities, road access, and demographic data in one view.

Real estate developers analyze infrastructure development patterns to predict growth corridors. Agricultural businesses map farm settlements, track rural market access, and plan distribution networks using verified spatial intelligence.

For Civil Society and Community Advocates

Document infrastructure failures with evidence that governments can't ignore. Pin that collapsed bridge with photos, coordinates, and timestamps. Map illegal dumpsites with satellite imagery. Track promised vs delivered projects in your local government area.

Advocacy becomes evidence-based. Instead of complaints, present verified data showing exactly what needs fixing, how long it's been broken, and what resources exist (or don't exist) to address it.

For Ordinary Citizens

Need emergency healthcare? Search the map for nearest facility with specific services. Reporting infrastructure problems? Pin it with a photo and create a permanent public record. Planning travel? Check real-time road conditions and infrastructure status along your route.

Citizens become contributors like how TikTok videos and social media posts feed into the pipeline, South-West residents' photos and reports feed into our verification system, transforming everyone into regional intelligence sensors.

Archive Everything: Building Permanent Records

Content verified for Bellingcat's map "is logged in a central database where the material is archived for future use". Nothing disappears. Everything is preserved.

This is crucial for accountability. When a governor promises infrastructure in 2024, we document it. When construction starts in 2025, we update it. When the project is abandoned in 2026, we record it. In 2027, journalists, researchers, and voters have a permanent, verified record showing the gap between promises and delivery.

Over years, these archives become invaluable. Track how regions develop over decades. Study which interventions worked and which failed. Identify long-term patterns invisible in annual reports. Create institutional memory that survives election cycles and administration changes.

Time-Series Analysis: Watch the Region Evolve

The pins are "sorted by date of publication or chronolocation" allowing users to see how situations evolved over time. Our platform will show the South-West's evolution across months and years.

Watch urban sprawl in Lagos from 2020-2030 using satellite imagery time-lapse. See flood patterns across rainy seasons showing which areas flood repeatedly. Track infrastructure completion rates across administrations. Monitor how development projects cluster in certain areas while others remain neglected.

This temporal dimension transforms static maps into dynamic intelligence systems revealing patterns that would be invisible otherwise.

Mobile-First Citizen Reporting

About 70% of evidence comes from TikTok content and social media posts from ordinary citizens. Citizens became the largest intelligence network simply by documenting what they saw with their smartphones.

Our platform embraces this model. Anyone with a smartphone can contribute:

• See a pothole? Snap a photo with location enabled, submit it through our mobile app
• Notice a new construction project? Document it for the regional record
• Experience flooding? Record it with timestamp and location for pattern analysis
• Find a broken streetlight? Pin it and create accountability pressure

Every submission goes through verification before appearing publicly, but the power lies in millions of eyes documenting regional reality continuously.

Changing How People View and Use Data

Currently, regional data exists but remains inaccessible locked in government offices, buried in reports, scattered across agencies, unverified on social media, or simply nonexistent. Our platform transforms this:

• From inaccessible to open: Anyone with internet access can see verified regional intelligence
• From static to living: Real-time updates reflecting current ground truth, not outdated reports
• From abstract to visual: Complex data becomes intuitive visual maps understandable at a glance
• From passive to participatory: Citizens contribute intelligence, not just consume it
• From fragmented to integrated: See connections between infrastructure, services, development, and incidents
• From doubtful to verified: Every claim backed by evidence, every point verified using investigative standards

Building Regional Accountability Infrastructure

Our platform doesn't just provide information it creates permanent public records enabling accountability. Promises become benchmarks. Projects become trackable. Failures become documented. Successes become verifiable.

Over time, this creates a culture where claims must match reality because the difference is visible, verified, and permanent.

Why the South-West Must Build This

This model "connects journalism and rights advocacy and crime investigation" creating something entirely new. The South-West can pioneer this model for regional governance in Nigeria.

We have the technical talent, institutional capacity, civic culture, and innovative spirit to make this work. By building this platform, we demonstrate a new model where data flows freely, citizens participate in intelligence gathering, accountability is systematized, and decisions ground themselves in verified evidence.

When other regions see what becomes possible with comprehensive geospatial intelligence infrastructure, they will follow. The South-West becomes the benchmark not through rhetoric but through demonstrable capability.

This open-source intelligence can reveal truth in conflict zones, as well as show Nigerians that verified regional intelligence can transform governance, development, and accountability in peacetime.

How Your Support Makes This Real

Building investigative-grade intelligence infrastructure requires investment. Your contribution directly funds:

• Core platform development: Interactive mapping engine, spatial databases, verification workflows, mobile applications
• Verification infrastructure: Training verification teams, developing protocols, establishing quality control
• Data collection networks: Supporting citizen reporters, community validators, field teams across all six states
• Technical infrastructure: Secure hosting, continuous backups, 24/7 availability, satellite imagery access
• Training and capacity building: Teaching open-source intelligence techniques to journalists, researchers, citizens
• Long-term sustainability: Ensuring the platform operates and improves for decades

Join the Intelligence Revolution

The South-west monitoring map "aims to provide reliable information for policymakers, journalists as well as justice and accountability bodies". Our South-West platform will serve the same functions but proactively, before crises force their creation.

Every contribution invests in transparent, accountable, data-driven regional governance. You're funding infrastructure that makes government more effective, planning more evidence-based, journalism more investigative, research more accessible, and civic participation more meaningful.

Let the South-West show Nigeria what open-source regional intelligence infrastructure can achieve. Let us build the verified, visual, accessible data foundation transforming how we understand, govern, and develop our region.

Together, we make this vision real. Together, we build intelligence infrastructure serving generations.

— Oluwaseyi & The South-West Geo Data Intelligence Team