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Understanding Civil Society And Government Partnership By Engr. Bashir Lawal
The three-day retreat between the Government, Civil Society and Donor Agencies held in Kaduna recently was a serious preliminary activities to seal what relation would Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have with the federal Government. The theme of the retreat was titled “Establishing a Platform for True Partnership”
It is true that during the military dictatorship era, the CSOs engaged the military confrontationally until the emergence of civil democracy in 1999. Since then, the relation between the CSOs has not been cordial, and with the unfriendly and some anti masses government’s policies, the CSOs have not been comfortable with the government. This made the government’s call for partnership become suspicious and seen by the CSOs as an opportunity for the government to gag and pocket them.
The mutual suspicions between the duos reared its ugly head at the commencement of Kaduna retreat even though Dr. Lanre Adebayo, a Director in National Orientation Agency, who also chaired the Planning/Implementation Committee of the retreat made it abundantly clearl that the retreat is not to teleguide or connive with CSOs to establish the partnership. This was also, collaborated, by Engr. (Dr.) Muhammad Abba-Gana, the Special Adviser to the President on Relation with Civil Society who observed that “Civil Society is the third sector of the economy, the retreat will be the occasion to address dearly and without bitterness how best to address the factors militating against the true collaboration between the government and the Civil Society”.
The CSOs were of the opinion that the Government had earlier called for the regulation of the Civil Society which was seen as an affront to gag the CSOs or even de-register them, as observed by Chima Ubani(Chima died just two weeks after the retreat) in his paper on ‘Self Regulation of CSOs: Reflection on the Scottish Experience in Nigeria’.There exist already, frame work for statutory regulation of Civil Society organizations, and it would be superfluous to contemplate another one. The Corporate Affairs Commission is a regulatory body, where currently Civil Society organization are registered with and it has power to examine their account and so on.
The mutual suspicion started dwindling down when organisers were re-emphasizing their commitment to the partnership and requesting that the Civil Society was invited to discuss among their membership on how the action plan, frame work and how the whole partnership should be. In the spirit of democracy, the retreat allowed open discussions and give room to CSOs to voice their opinion on the partnership. Unlike some retreats where special set of people or group have been employed to impose ideas and will be the clique to either chair the sessions or be called solely to comment on presented papers or allowed to speak during questions and answers sessions, the Kaduna retreat was so transparent that except one did not raise his hand to pass comment, it was the avenue that freedom of speech was at its peak. If I can used the word ‘hijack’, the Civil Society hijacked the whole retreat without no ill feelings from the organizers and at it end the two partners smiled at each other while the National Orientation Agency won the heart of the Civil Society as at least “sincere for now’.
The need for partnership between the Civil Society and the Government is not only limited to Nigeria government. It is a global phenomenon. The Donor Agencies are coming together too. And it is at the request of the Donor Agencies that the issue of partnering comes to being. According to Bruno Venditto, a program Adviser (Non-State Actor) to Delegation of European Commission said, ‘there is a spectrum through which Civil Society engages with the state, from an oppositional role through complementing the state role and even supplementing the state by filling gaps which the state is no longer able to provide for, through service delivery’. Therefore the Donor Agencies are recognizing government participation as inevitable. Dr. Chudi Okafor, a senior Social Development Specialist at World Bank Office, Abuja in his presentation at the retreat made it known that World Bank is realizing its mission in Nigeria through its Country Partnership Program (CPS). It is a partnership between the Bank, UK DFID and the Nigeria Government which was anchored on National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) and equally the CPS is not only facilitating citizen empowering and building Civil Society capacity but also strengthening the Citizen-State Inter face. The implication of this is that if the donors are strengthening and sponsoring Citizen-State Interface, it means the Civil Society should be ready to interact/partnership with government. He made it clear that there are some funds that the government could not assess from the World Bank except with its partners with Civil Society.
With the insight from the Donor Agencies and World Bank, the Civil Society Organizations present at the retreat were able see reasons while partnership with government may become unavoidable. Civil Society partnership with the government has come and it should be. Even though the Civil Society still has distrusts in the government, it is obvious that the Civil Society has ever been the watch dog of every government activities. The partnership should not stop the role the Civil Society or compromise its watch dog role.
It is inevitable that the partnership shall bring about government injecting money into the activities of the Civil Society. This does not mean a bought-over. My understanding is that if the government funds an organisation like Transition Monitory Group(TMG) for example,with one hundred Million, I am sure TMG will go extra miles in its activities i.e. Monitoring Election. The question is, would TMG descend so low, to write its reports by praising the government where there is election laxity because it receives funds from Government. Definitely partnership should now allow the CSOs to loose their integrity.
Hajiya Bilikisu Yusuf warned the Civil Society about complacency in the partnership. She chaired one of the sessions. She took the participants through the memory lane of the period of the inglorious military regime where the government attempted to divide the ranks and files of the Civil Society, it was almost a success. The government looks forward to CSOs for partnership. The Government has seen the advantage especially accessing some funds from World Bank. Therefore, if the truly committed CSOs refuse to join the partnership, the government may be forced to look for partnership in any CSOs that may work against the spirit of Civil Society. Some NGOs are hawks, if the government falls for them, they will not serve the government, pollute the system, receive plenty money from Donor Agencies, little or no work will be done by them, the masses will become more impoverished and at the end of the day, Nigeria Civil Society Organization shall be blamed.
I likened the need for Civil Society and government partnership with the parable of a dog. A sage was going out with his companion and they saw a carcass of a dog in the street, the sage stood before the dead dog while his companion were in hurry to leave but by tradition, the must not leave their leader. The leader saw this and asked his companions who among them that loves the dead dog, but none of them, they were covering their nose with handkerchief and urging the sage to let go. The sage now told the companions if you don not see anything good in this dead dog, I have seen one-its immaculate white clean teeth.
If some CSOs are up till now see nothing good in the partnership, I think it suffices that the mere call by the Donor Agencies who are the sponsors of the NGOs is enough, and what do we gain in opposing the government if the same government wants our helping hand to work together for the betterment of the poor masses which we claim to represent.
Executive Director Public Affairs and Democracy Initiative (PAADI)
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