Opinion

The Oracle: CSOs and the Media in Promoting Democracy and Good Governance in Nigeria (Pt. 4)

Published

10 months ago

November 24, 2023

Eric

By Mike Ozekhome

Introduction

In the last part of this intervention, we dealt with the following sub-topics: Good governance differs from country to country; Major good governance indicators and Good governance needs strong followership (having commenced same). In this part, we shall further explore the following themes: Good governance needs strong followership; Some CSOs in Nigeria; Typologies of Nigerian CSOs; Questions raised by CSOs; Proliferation and Roles of CSOs; NGOs and the role of CSOs. Please read on.

Good Governance Needs Strong Followership
(Civil Society Organizations) (continues)

Members of the political community should see good governance as a collective effort where they must play their part. Citizens can set up Non-governmental organizations to address or assist government in tackling some perceived problems of the polity. Civil societies like religious organizations, organized labour, academic unions, student organizations, should be strengthened and help in defending the autonomy of private interest. The civil society and Non-governmental organizations, community based organizations, market associations, professional associations should be able to collaborate and mobilize the citizens to stand against democratic abuses, obnoxious laws and policies; roguery in position of power, election rigging etc. The end will be massive withdrawal of support in the form of mass action, strikes, demonstration etc until government purges itself of toga of enslavement and maltreatment of the people.

In the same vein, it follows that any government that cannot command followership of its citizen is already heading to the precipice. If it degenerate to level of exceeding its powers, and becomes purposeless and infringes on natural rights of the people, it should be dissolved because the essence of instating governance has been defeated. Choosing credible leaders is the greatest duty followers must perform. It is incumbent on them to elect and enthrone their leader. They should not tolerate poor leadership. They should asses their leaders based on veritable values of honesty, integrity, accountability, probity etc. The people should not mortgage their conscience by taking bribe from the leader before they elect them. They must note that any leader who wants to buy the people is evil and will eventually shortchange them. The people should elicit nothing short of sound accountable leadership”. Good governance posits also that there must be absence of corruption so as to preserve the integrity of democracy. The absence of bribery, graft and corrupt in general spurs growth, development and foreign investment.

SOME CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS IN NIGERIA

Acronyms and Abbreviations
ASUU – Academic Staff Union of Universities
CAN – Christian Association of Nigeria
CBO – Community based Organization
CLO – Civil Liberties Organization
CSO – Civil Society Organization
DG – Democracy and Governance
CEDPA – Centre for Development and Population Activities
ENABLE – Creating an Enabling Environment for Women’s Effective Participation.
FOIACT – Freedom of Information Act
FOMWAN – Federation of Muslim Woman’s Association of Nigeria
ILO – International Labour Organization
INEC – Independent National Electoral Commission
LAW GROUP – International Human Rights Law Group
MAN – Manufactures Association of Nigeria
NACCIMA – National Association of Chambers of Commerce,
Industry Mines and Agriculture.
NCWS – National Council of Women’s Societies
NLC – Nigerian Labour Congress
NGO – Non-Government Organization
NSCIA – Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs
PACE – Partnership for Advocacy and Civil Empowerment
PROSPECT – Promoting Stakeholder Participation in Economic Transition
TMG – Transition Monitoring Group
UDD – Universal Defenders of Democracy

TYPOLOGIES OF NIGERIAN CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS

1. Professional Associations
2. Labour and Trade Unions
3. Philanthropic Organizations
4. Religious or Faith-based Organizations
5. Development NGOs
• Service Delivery Organizations
• Research, Resource/Support Centres
6. Foundations
7. Ethnic Militias/Vanguards
8. Networks:
• Umbrellas
• Issue-driven Networks Health, Education
• Regional Networks
• Woman’s Networks
9. Private Sector
10. Community-Based Organizations (CBOs)
• Community Development Associations (CDAs)
• Town Unions
• Religious Association
• Neighborhood Associations and Vigilance Groups
• Social Clubs and Age Grade Associations
• Trade Guilds
• Market Women Associations
• Youth Organizations

QUESTIONS RAISED BY CSOs

Support for civil society’s role in building democracy in Nigeria thus raises three
(3) Fundamental questions:
1. How can civil society’s meta-role in restoring the interest of the public on the priority agenda of the public on the priority agenda of the political elite be strengthened?

2. How can the centrifugal forces among civil society groups be best managed so that coalitions advocating priority public issues can be maintained?
3. How does the structural division within civil society between interest based organizations and the NGOs impact USAID strategy for assisting civil society’s role in building democracy in Nigeria.

PROLIFERATION AND ROLES OF CSOs IN NIGERIA

After decades of struggling with military rule, Nigerian Civil Society has emerged as a vibrant, battle-hardened force for change in the Nation’s young democracy. Yet civil society in Nigeria developed in relations to the beleaguered state. Thus the diversity and many complexities that characterize Nigerian politics are reflected in its dynamic civil society, including the contradictions that result in seeking to build a democracy out of a policy that is not a single coherent nation.

NON GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOs)

Closely related to but different from CSOs are Non Government Organizations (NGOs). NGO are non-governmental organizations which are founded voluntarily by citizens who have the zeal to work for the welfare of the citizens. They are generally formed independent of the government; non-profit making and very active in humanitarian and social causes.

They also include clubs and associations that provide services to their members and the larger society. They have high degree of public trust which make them useful stakeholders for the concerns of society. Some NGOs have been known to be lobby groups for corporations, e.g, the World Economic Forum. But they are distinct from International and inter-government organizations (IOs), in that the latter group is more directly involved with sovereign states and their governments.

Examples of NGOs are: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Salvation Army, Emergency Nutrition Network, Health link, Health Net TPO, CARE (fighting against global poverty) and Global Humanitarian Assistance.

Other examples are: INGO – An international NGO such as Oxfam; ENGO – An environmental NGO like Greenpeace; RINGO – A religious international NGO such as Catholic Relief Services; CSO – A Civil Society Organization like Amnesty International.

THE NIGERIAN STATE

The Nigerian state began as a colonial imposition on a wide range of polities existing within Nigeria’s current boundaries, making it in many ways a nation of nations several decades of irresponsible military rule, after the exit of the colonialists, left the country as deeply divided as it was prior to independence. Military leaders and their civilian allies exploited ethnic differences to prolong their stay in power and to capture the vast oil revenues that had been centralized under state control since the 1970s. As the mismanaged economy rose-divided with oil prices in the 1980s, the handful of elite with access to the state grew fabulously rich while the number of Nigerians living in poverty rose shockingly from a quarter of the population in the 1970s to three-quarters of the population in the 1990s. The elite-known as the ‘Big Men”-have massive networks of clients dependent upon them for channels to state Largesse.

NIGERIAN POLITICS

Nigerian politics is primarily a game of “Big Men” seeking to recoup their election investments and to expand their access to state resources, it often has little to do with improving the lot of the vast majority of Nigerian. The great promises of civil society for democratic development in Nigeria therefore, is that the sector as a whole has the potential to reverse this growing political distance between the powerful elite and the largely disenfranchised masses. Civil society’s strength is in preserving a plurality of aggregated interest to balance those of the elite and to check the elite’s excesses on specific issues on occasion. The latter role, however, depends upon a unanimity among civil society groups that is difficult to forge and even harder to maintain beyond the political moment.
THE ROLE OF CSOs

The political elite has long recognized both the promise and problems of civil society, and since the 1960s they have used a combination of repression and cooptation to bring the most powerful and representative of these groups into the orbit of the state. Trade unions, for instance, bear heavy state regulation and are partially dependent upon the state for funds. Nonetheless, unions and other great associations like the Bar Association fought military rule throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and suffered as a result.

As these massive Civil Society groups were hobbled by military interference, many Nigeria activist turned to a new type of organization that began to proliferate in the late 1980s, the NGO. It is important to remember that NGOs are non sub-category of CSOs.

NGOs at first were often small and structured undemocratically in that their executives were not elected by the members of the organization or by the population they sought to serve. Yet NGOs offered services and skills to replace those abandoned by the receding state, and provided critical platform for dissent against the military that international donors could readily recognize and support.
Civil Society organizations balance the strength and influence of the state, they are supposed to protect citizens from abuses of state power. They play the role of monitor and watchdog. They embody the rights to citizens to freedom of expression and association and they are channels of popular participation in governance. Moreover, the end of military rule in 1999 opened political space and provoked a civil renaissance. The older, massive, interest based associations like trade unions and professional associations have rebuilt their structures and reasserted their former dominance of the political scene. Meanwhile, NGOs have proliferated across the country and many have begun the process of democratizing their own structure and developing mechanisms of representation and accountability.

Civil Society has the potential to reserve the growing political distance between the powerful elite and the largely disenfranchised masses. However, CSOs are not of one mind on issues, nor do they speak with one voice. CSOs represents issues from nearly all sides and speaks with a cacophony of interests and demands that overlap, complete and/or contradict one another. In this context, can CSOs bring the government to reflect citizens’ interest?

To be continued…

Thought for the Week

“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Opinion

The End of a Political Party

Published

5 hours ago

September 16, 2024

Eric

By Obianuju Kanu-Ogoko

It is deeply alarming and shameful to witness an elected official of an opposition party openly calling for the continuation of President Tinubu’s administration. This blatant betrayal goes against the very essence of democratic opposition and makes a mockery of the values the PDP is supposed to stand for.

Even more concerning is the deafening silence from North Central leadership. This silence comes at a price—For the funneled $3 million to buy off the courts for one of their Leaders’, the NC has compromised integrity, ensuring that any potential challenge is conveniently quashed. Such actions reveal a deeply compromised leadership, one that no longer stands for the people but for personal gain.

When a member of a political party publicly supports the ruling party, it raises the critical question: Who is truly standing for the PDP? When a Minister publicly insulted PDP and said that he is standing with the President, and you did nothing; why won’t others blatantly insult the party? Only under the Watch of this NWC has PDP been so ridiculed to the gutters. Where is the opposition we so desperately need in this time of political crisis? It is a betrayal of trust, of principles and of the party’s very foundation.

The leadership of this party has failed woefully. You have turned the PDP into a laughing stock, a hollow shell of what it once was. No political party with any credibility or integrity will even consider aligning or merging with the PDP at this rate. The decay runs deep and the shame is monumental.

WHAT A DISGRACE!

Opinion

Day Dele Momodu Made Me Live Above My Means

Published

2 weeks ago

September 1, 2024

Eric

By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

These are dangerous days of gross shamelessness in totalitarian Nigeria.
Pathetic flaunting of clannish power is all the rage, and a good number of supposedly modern-day Nigerians have thrown their brains into the primordial ring.

One pathetic character came to me the other day stressing that the only way I can prove to him that I am not an ethnic bigot is to write an article attacking Dele Momodu!

I could not make any head or tail of the bloke’s proposition because I did not understand how ethnic bigotry can come up in an issue concerning Dele Momodu and my poor self.

The dotty guy made the further elaboration that I stand accused of turning into a “philosopher of the right” instead of supporting the government of the day which belongs to the left!

A toast to Karl Marx in presidential jet and presidential yacht!

I nearly expired with laughter as I remembered how one fat kept man who spells his surname as “San” (for Senior Advocate of Nigeria – SAN) wrote a wretched piece on me as an ethnic bigot and compelled one boozy rascal that dubiously studied law in my time at Great Ife to put it on my Facebook wall!

The excited tribesmen of Nigerian democracy and their giddy slaves have been greased to use attack as the first aspect of defence by calling all dissenting voices “ethnic bigots” as balm on their rotted consciences.

The bloke urging me to attack Dele Momodu was saddened when he learnt that I regarded the Ovation publisher as “my brother”!

Even amid the strange doings in Nigeria of the moment I can still count on some famous brothers who have not denied me such as Senator Babafemi Ojudu who privileged me to read his soon-to-be-published memoir as a fellow Guerrilla Journalist, and the lionized actor Richard Mofe-Damijo (RMD) who while on a recent film project in faraway Canada made my professor cousin over there to know that “Uzor is my brother!”

It is now incumbent on me to tell the world of the day that Dele Momodu made me live above my means.

All the court jesters, toadies, fawners, bootlickers and ill-assorted jobbers and hirelings put together can never be renewed with enough palliatives to countermand my respect for Dele Momodu who once told our friend in London who was boasting that he was chased out of Nigeria by General Babangida because of his activism: “Babangida did not chase you out of Nigeria. You found love with an oyinbo woman and followed her to London. Leave Babangida out of the matter!”

Dele Momodu takes his writing seriously, and does let me have a look at his manuscripts – even the one written on his presidential campaign by his campaign manager.

Unlike most Nigerians who are given to half measures, Dele Momodu writes so well and insists on having different fresh eyes to look at his works.

It was a sunny day in Lagos that I got a call from the Ovation publisher that I should stand by to do some work on a biography he was about to publish.

He warned me that I have only one day to do the work, and I replied him that I was raring to go because I love impossible challenges.

The manuscript of the biography hit my email in fast seconds, and before I could say Bob Dee a fat alert burst my spare bank account!

Being a ragged-trousered philanthropist, a la the title of Robert Tressel’s proletarian novel, I protested to Dele that it’s only beer money I needed but, kind and ever rendering soul that he is, he would not hear of it.

I went to Lagos Country Club, Ikeja and sacked my young brother, Vitus Akudinobi, from his office in the club so that I can concentrate fully on the work.

Many phone calls came my way, and I told my friends to go to my divine watering-hole to wait for me there and eat and drink all that they wanted because “money is not my problem!”

More calls came from my guys and their groupies asking for all makes of booze, isiewu, nkwobi and the assorted lots, and I asked them to continue to have a ball in my absence, that I would join them later to pick up the bill!

The many friends of the poor poet were astonished at the new-fangled wealth and confidence of the new member of the idle rich class!

It was a beautiful read that Dele Momodu had on offer, and by late evening I had read the entire book, and done some minor editing here and there.

It was then up to me to conclude the task by doing routine editing – or adding “style” as Tom Sawyer would tell his buddy Huckleberry Finn in the eponymous adventure books of Mark Twain.

I chose the style option, and I was indeed in my elements, enjoying all aspects of the book until it was getting to ten in the night, and my partying friends were frantically calling for my appearance.

I was totally satisfied with my effort such that I felt proud pressing the “Send” button on my laptop for onward transmission to Dele Momodu’s email.

I then rushed to the restaurant where my friends were waiting for me, and I had hardly settled down when one of Dele’s assistants called to say that there were some issues with the script I sent!

I had to perforce reopen up my computer in the bar, and I could not immediately fathom which of the saved copies happened to be the real deal.

One then remembered that there were tell-tale signs when the computer kept warning that I was putting too much on the clipboard or whatever.

It’s such a downer that after feeling so high that one had done the best possible work only to be left with the words of James Hadley Chase in The Sucker Punch: “It’s only when a guy gets full of confidence that he’s wide open for the sucker punch.”
Lesson learnt: keep it simple – even if you have been made to live above your means by Dele Momodu!

To end, how can a wannabe state agent and government apologist, a hired askari, hope to get me to write an article against a brother who has done me no harm whatsoever? Mba!

I admire Dele Momodu immensely for his courage of conviction to tell truth to power.

Opinion

PDP at 26, A Time for Reflection not Celebration

Published

2 weeks ago

September 1, 2024

Eric

By Obianuju Kanu-Ogoko

At 26 years, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) should have been a pillar of strength, a beacon of hope and a testament to the enduring promise of democracy in Nigeria.*

Yet, as we stand at this milestone, it is clear that we have little, if anything, to celebrate. Instead, this anniversary marks a sobering moment of reflection, a time to confront the hard truths that have plagued our journey and to acknowledge the gap between our potential and our reality.

Twenty-six years should have seen us mature into a force for good, a party that consistently upholds the values of integrity, unity and progress for all Nigerians.

But the reality is far from this ideal. Instead of celebrating, we must face the uncomfortable truth: *at 26, the PDP has failed to live up to the promise that once inspired millions.*

We cannot celebrate when our internal divisions have weakened our ability to lead. We cannot celebrate when the very principles that should guide us: justice, fairness and accountability,have been sidelined in favor of personal ambition and short-term gains. We cannot celebrate when the Nigerian people, who once looked to the PDP for leadership, now question our relevance and our commitment to their welfare.

This is not a time for self-congratulation. It is a time for deep introspection and honest assessment. What have we truly achieved? Where did we go wrong? And most importantly, how do we rebuild the trust that has been lost? These are the questions we must ask ourselves, not just as a party, but as individuals who believe in the ideals that the PDP was founded upon.

At 26, we should be at the height of our powers, but instead, we find ourselves at a crossroads. The path forward is not easy, but it is necessary. We must return to our roots, to the values that once made the PDP a symbol of hope and possibility. We must rebuild from within, embracing transparency, unity and a renewed commitment to serving the people of Nigeria.

There is no celebration today, only the recognition that we have a long road ahead. But if we use this moment wisely, if we truly learn from our past mistakes, there is still hope for a future where the PDP can once again stand tall, not just in name, but in action and impact. The journey begins now, not with *fanfare but with resolve.