Nigerian Civil Society Organisations

Nigerian Civil Society Organisations: How Well and How Right

Salihu Moh. Lukman

George Soros, in his book The Age of Fallibility, made the point that ‘society is suspicious of those who claim to be virtuous and not without justification’. The claim of being virtuous is very conventional and inherent with civil society actors. Whether they live up to this virtuous claim or not, is open to value judgement, subjectivity and like Soros assert, the burden of proof is certainly that of the claimant.

It is quite unfair to come to generalised conclusions regarding assessment of the work of civil society organisations. However, it is very valid to check the extent to which they, through lived reality and based on combination of both impact and demonstrable commitment to improved public welfare, strengthen cultural, social, economic and political life of society. Impact presupposes reference to some standards and values. This could be a problem. In the first place, do we have standards or values? If we do, are they shared or do they in anyway aggregate to some form of expectations? Do these standards or values by whatever estimation determine public perceptions, and more specifically the orientation of the work of civil society actors? Who are these civil society organisations, anyway?

Civil society organisations include trade unions, professional associations, faith-based groups, media organisations, community-based groups and other forms of non-governmental organisations. In the Nigerian context, it is a far cry to claim any known shared standard or value with respect to activities of these organisations. At best, regressive trend in our societal life, which accounts for crashed standards and value system, tend to strengthen the rise of these organisations based on the need to raise the capacity of citizens to address social, economic and political developmental challenges.

A second factor is a combination of declining public and private sector services coupled with inflexible and shrinking employment environment. This made the work of civil society organisations to serve as alternative source for income earning opportunity besides providing services. Thirdly, the existence of repressive and unpopular governments for more than twenty years in the country also serve as impetus for the proliferation of organisations that seek to challenge the legitimacy of policy, programmes and ultimately the existence of these governments.

No doubt, the existence of these organisations assisted considerably to open up space for the expression of dissenting opinions and what could be regarded as alternative voices. Unfortunately, this very character and attribute has come to serve as a shield for opportunistic and nuisance activities of some civil society organisations. In some respects, the nation has witnessed situations where actions and positions of groups regarding matters of public policy and management of resources hardly depart from prevailing horrid practices associated with government. If anything, where this is the case, it also raised questions about the efficacy of, at the minimum, strategies employed by these organisations.

Key assumption that connotes legitimacy to the existence of civil society organisations is that they are expected to be knowledge driven. Which means that actors, or at least leaders, have requisite skills to investigate problems of society, proffer solutions and develop plan to facilitate buy-in by other segments of society and government. This bears certain presuppositions to the effect that the organisation also has capacity to mobilise the needed resources for its activities and to that extent, it will restrict the scope of mobilisation of resources to implement activity and the operational cost that comes with it.

Regulation would be needed to firstly test the assumption. Secondly, to provide conditions for validating the assumptions. And thirdly to ensure that such conditions are upheld and respected by actors who seek to voluntarily engage in this mode of organising. Unfortunately, given potentials for instituting frameworks that leads to repressive and authoritarian practices, which could emasculate genuine organisations of the people, discussion of regulation as far as matters of civil society organisation is concerned appears to be very unpopular and in some cases offensive, perhaps legitimately so. But for how long should we continue to shy away from open discussions and debate about the need to establish clear and shared national standards regarding the work of civil society organisations, which is what the whole debate about regulation is about?

It is important however that we quickly recognise that the context of the debate is not to suggest the complete absence of standard but basically to highlight the existence of very low regulatory requirement and standard, which is today responsible for a situation that portends legitimacy and accountability problems. Legitimacy here basically refers to question of justification for the existence of these organisations while accountability deals with responsibility of these organisations to be answerable to the citizens or groups they seek to serve.

In terms of legitimacy, the best way to present the argument is to say that there are many civil society organisations that would not be missed by Nigerians if they are to close shop. These organisations are predominantly bureaucracies and have no direct bearing to the people and their activities not designed to primarily meet the immediate needs of the people. Where there is any correlation between these activities and the needs of the people, it could as well be coincidental.

There are of course very ridiculous cases where activities are designed purely based on the availability of funding. This brings us to the problem of accountability. There are two sides to this issue, i. e. financial and programme accountability. The easiest is financial accountability, which is just to ensure proper book keeping and expenditure based on approved budget. The second has to do with structures of debate, consensus, planning, implementation, monitoring and report.

This is the democratic ethos that validates and emphasises the authority of civil society organisations to the struggle for democracy. A very glaring issue here is that the dominance of bureaucracy in the life of any organisation, particularly in situations where such a bureaucracy is the central pillar and perhaps the only existing locus of power and given complete absence of membership, subscription or any form of affiliation, the moral authority and claims to democratic principles is weakened.

It is important that this serves as the point of engagement in the debate. The sad thing is that this is also the point of engagement by repressive regimes. Through these engagements, vibrant democratic organisations – trade unions, students’ organisations, human right groups, etc. – have been trampled upon by especially military regimes. Some of these regimes have promoted, sponsored and in some cases directly formed counter organisations with dubious values that have outlived them and to some extent also contributing to lowering standards. In addition, experiences of other countries, including contemporary policy of the US government of war on terror, have been and are being used to suppress civil society organisations in the name of regulation. What should be the appropriate response? Avoid debate to raise standards regarding the work of civil society organisations? This could be self-destructive.

There is the international dimension to this debate. First is the currency of borrowed language and the use of concepts and phrases that hardly captures national contexts and realities. In some cases, it is a case of over generalisation of national conditions. Secondly, there is the role of international donor community and what are now generally referred to as International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGO). The general trend is that they impose policies and practices that highlight technical competence on issues of project development and management. This has the potential to diffuse political and democratic roles of civil society organisations and in fact support the movement towards consolidating bureaucratic controls.

The question is, to what extent are there regulations to check the abrasive influence of donor community and INGOs regarding the development of standards that informed the work of civil society organisations? Given the volume of resources at their disposal, although only relatively high at national level, their influence, power and impact is certainly enormous. Expectedly, the National Planning Commission is to be the regulatory agency. Paradoxically, it is also a beneficiary in some ways of the activities of these organisations. To what extent therefore can it regulate the work of organisations it draws support from? A readily proposal is to insulate it from any form of financial or so-called technical support from organisations it is expected to competently and impartially regulate. Without any doubt, the nation has the resources and the capacity to attain this feat.

With respect to setting or raising standards or values through regulation, it is important that Nigerians, in particular civil society organisations, engage these issues and begin to concretely raise standards. The starting point is basically what can be called advocacy for-self and against self-degeneracy. Advocacy for-self would be to come up with those proposals that would strengthen democratic ethos but Advocacy against self-degeneracy would be to establish basic principles of dos and don’t. The challenge is basically a question of developing the democratic mechanism for enforcement, including that of self-regulation.

Without any hesitation, this is at the moment very weak and needs to be strengthened. In fact, it could be argued that there is a relationship between low standards regarding the work of civil society organisations, on the one hand, and the preponderance of authoritarian values and practices in both government and private life. To considerable extent, this is also the natural outcome of repressive measures over the years.

To therefore address this reality is both a national democratic imperative and organisationally obligatory if the consideration is to guarantee that civil society organisations predominantly act to deliver public good. The starting point is to guarantee the existence of conditions and availability of national resources for the work of civil society. The most critical factor of regulations is therefore issues of source, structure of distribution, conditions and access to the resources. The nation need to summon the courage to address them and civil society organisations and actors have a responsibility to open up and engage the debate.