Civil society organisations have not done badly
By Lekan Sote
As part of Christendom in Europe, the British country evolved the following social hierarchy among its political realms: The Commons, represented by the House of Commons in the British Parliament; the nobility, or Lords Temporal, in the House of Lords; and the clerics, or Lords Spiritual, in the Church of England.
Though it may be incorrect to attribute the observation to political theorist, that “There were three Estates in the (British) Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important than all,” to English political theorist Edmund Burke, there is no doubt that the media is distinct in the political realm of modern states.
Modern political literature is attempting to redefine the actors of today’s democratic states as a collective of government, business and the civil society, which the more legalistic-minded would describe as Non-Governmental Organisations.
Like the media, to which the Nigerian Constitution assigns the responsibility of holding government accountable to the people, civil society organisations have assumed the role of advocate on behalf of the people.
Section 22 of the Constitution provides that “The media (or the print media), radio, television and other agencies of the mass media shall, at all times, be free to uphold the fundamental objectives in (Chapter II of the Constitution) and uphold the responsibility of Government to the people.”
Keen observer would have discerned that civil society or Non-Governmental Organisations have become a veritable and important aspect of the politics of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic that dawned in May 1999.
Many civil society organisations are political, maybe because they need to monitor and guide those who run the new democratic dispensation. But some others concern themselves with social issues, like rape, spouse abuse, health, girl child education and the environment.
Many NGOs accompanied President Bola Tinubu to the recently concluded COP 28 in Dubai, though there are arguments as whether the Federal Government should have paid for their trip. Be that as it may.
COP 28, or Conference of the Parties, is United Nations Climate Change Conference, held annually to find a clever way to turn a blind eye to the menace of global warming caused by the industrialised economies of the West and Asia.
Three of Nigeria’s most prominent civil society organisations are Socio-Economic Rights And Accountability Project, founded by Attorney Femi Falana, Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement, led by Samson Itodo, as Executive Director, and Human Rights Writer’s Association of Nigeria.
Civil society organisations, like Civil Liberties Organisation, Committee for Democratic and Human Rights, Campaign for Democracy, are a little less active as they used to be especially during the military era.
The more active organisations are being complemented by social media campaigns, with catchy hashtags, like #BringBackOurGirls and #endSARS, as adhoc platforms to assert some human rights or demand for certain government actions.
It is worthy of note that former American First Lady Mitchell Obama joined the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign to retrieve the girls that were abducted by Boko Haram insurgents.
Unfortunately, the campaign didn’t yield the required result. Many of those unfortunate girls have either perished or are simply lost to the vicissitudes that go with being abducted by heartless renegades.
But the #endSARS campaign successfully pressured the government to disband the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the Nigerian Police and probe alleged killings at Lekki Tollgate in Lagos. SARS was however replaced with SWAT, or Special Weapons and Tactics Team, an idea borrowed from the United States of America and the United Kingdom.
You may have noticed that the tribe of civil activists have been depleted by the death of the likes of Gani Fawehinmi and Comrade Ola Oni, and the old age, of nearly nonagerian Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka, who nonetheless speaks out whenever he finds the excesses of state actors of any hue unacceptable..
Falana appears to be the last man standing or doyen of this endangered species. But when the vagaries of old age catches up with him, the voices of social activists may be permanently shut off.
Many of today’s social activists are charlatans. With a slew of outfits that can only be described as special purpose vehicles, platforms used by socially and politically nonentities, desperately seeking relevance and ways to meet their existential needs.
While some civil society organisations truly make positive contributions to the process of deepening of democratic values in Nigeria, some others toe the negative line of muddying the political space with fake news, abuse and intimidation of political opinion that do not agree with their partisan views.
With just about one year to rounding up the first quarter-century of the Fourth Republic, it should be more than appropriate to examine the contributions of the more positive Nigerian civil society organisations.
Some civil society organisations are contributing positively to the fortune of the Fourth Republic. SERAP appears to be the leading light in the efforts to hold governments and state actors accountable to the citizens of Nigeria.
SERAP that has practically made a career out of suing governments especially, ad nauseum, on issues of corruption is clearly in the vanguard of civil society activism in Nigeria. Find below, some of its more recent interventions:
In 2018, SERAP got the permission of Justice Mohammed Idris “to seek an order of Mandamus to direct and compel the Federal Government to prosecute some principal officers of the National Assembly over allegations of padding and stealing of some N418 billion from the 2016 Budget.”
By the way, an order or “(writ of) mandamus is an order from a court to an inferior government official ordering the government official to properly fulfill their official duties or correct an abuse of discretion.”
In 2022, SERAP asked the Federal High Court of Lagos, to “direct and compel President (Muhammadu) Buhari to promptly and thoroughly investigate the spending of Ecological Fund by the governments at the Federal, States and Local Government levels from 2001 to (2022).”
And in 2023, SERAP filed a suit against President Tinubu over “failure to probe (what it described as) the grim allegations that over US$15 billion oil revenues and N200 billion budgeted to repair the (petroleum) refineries in Nigeria are missing and unaccounted for between 2020 and 2021.”
You could argue that Tinubu was not the President between 2020 and 2021, and you would be correct. But then, government is a continuum, with neither a beginning nor an end. As Americans would put it, “The (manure) rolls down the hill.”
YIAGA seems to prefer to draw the attention of the voting public to the integrity of pre-election processes; it emphasises voter sensitisation and voter education, so that the voting process can be more fulfilling for the voters.
Human Rights Writer’s Association of Nigeria is unrelenting in drawing attention to the lapses and excesses of the Independent National Electoral Commission and other agencies that have anything to do with elections.
Another civil society organisation that is actively interrogating government activities is BudgIT. It is currently holding the feet of the Federal Government to fire over the profligate Federal Government’s N2 17 trillion 2023 Supplementary Budget by BudgIT.
BudgIT, that describes itself as “a civic-tech organisation that promotes transparency and accountability in Nigeria to achieve good governance and quality service delivery has worked with the Federal Government and over 30 states in the federation, to achieve openness and transparency in their budget and fiscal operations,” recently wrote George Akume, Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
BudgIT wanted Akume to get President Bola Tinubu to review and remove the following line items from the Supplementary Budget, that has however, been passed by the National Assembly and assented to by the President.
The offending line items in the budget are purchases of official vehicles for the office of the First Lady (that is not known to the law) and SUV vehicles for the State House; and replacement of pool vehicles.
Others are, renovation of Presidential Quaters in Abuja Aso Rock Villa and Lagos Dodan Barracks and the official quarters of the Vice President; and the purchase of the exceedingly vexing N5.09 billion presidential yacht.
Aldo, in 2014, BudgIT created Tracka, a tool to continuously track integrity of implementation of government projects, to ensure service delivery by government Ministries, Departments and Agencies.
BudgIT encourages citizens to post photographs of projects implemented by governments unto a public platform. The expectation is that this will compel governments to complete all projects that they start.
A recent development and giant stride toward the deepening of democratic values and enhancing the performance of the media in Nigeria is the idea of fact-checks, to verify claims and debunk fake news.
Dubawa, whose motto is, “Amplifying truth,” formed by a civil society organisation, Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development trains fact-checkers, whose diligence seem to be replacing journalists, many of whom have become partisan, incompetent and unprofessional.
The verdict here is that, in this Fourth Republic of Nigeria, civil society organisations are doing far better than the media!
