Category: Sunday magazine

All over the country, Civil Society Organisations, CSOs, have continued to play significant roles in different sectors, especially areas neglected by government. Recently, during the BringBackOurGirls# campaign, they helped to bring the issue of the abducted school girls to the front burner.

However, a lot of criticism has trailed their structure, mode of operation and funding.  Mid last year, a bill to regulate their operation was proposed by a Nigerian lawmaker citing the fact that they get international funding which were not properly monitored.

A few weeks ago, NGOs across the country came together for their annual conference organised by NNGO at the NECA House in Lagos. Here, stakeholders from the public and private sectors took turn to share experiences, identify some of the problems and potential. Dr Ann Nzegu, who represented the Minister of National Planning, identified way government, civil society and the private sector can walk hand in hand to bring about changes in the different sectors across the country.

Some of the issues deliberated upon included improving the regulatory environment for NGOs, Civil Society Organisation’s legitimacy, transparency and accountability, the role of government and civil society.

A panel discussion session that included Hajia Saratu M. Shaffi of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), representative of Samaila Davids Khalif of SCUML, Yemisi Ransome Kuti, Oladotun Olugbemi, Peter Ademola Olayemi and Victor Nosegbe took turn to identify the problems affecting civil society over the years and tried to proffer solutions to some of these problems. Inefficient structure, management and funding were the major problems identified.

Dr Abiola Tilley Gyado, a development expert who retired from Plan International as the Pan African Director, talked about protecting the civic space. First, she began by speaking about the importance of social protection and why she is passionate about it.

“Social protection is a topic that is dear to my heart. In my various works, the issue had come up that social protection and it had been the centre of the work that I do over the years, the centre of developmental agenda. It has a link with HIV and AIDS, reproductive health and child survival. It is gaining a lot of popularity and importance not because we have not woken up to what we should have done to it.”

Tilley Gyado goes on to buttress her point with day-to-day occurrences which make the issue very important. “When we meet each other for the first time, we ask: how are you? It is inquiring about your well being. A person who is hopeless, jobless and hungry cannot smile when you say how are you? With that concept, we can say that social protection has no single definition but it is a fundamental human right. It takes care of vulnerability and insecurity.”

She went on: “The question how are you that can be answered conveniently by a person in Lagos, cannot be answered the same way by a person in Damaturu who was recently affected by the bomb blast. Here, we are talking about insecurity, lack of good life and lack of education. These bring about inequality, inconsistency and uncertainty. We must try to remember that everything is the consequence of what should have been.”

Stressing the fact that the issues are universal and must not be treated with levity, the development expert added that “Some would say all these are imported theories; however, I would say that social protection is not an importation. This can be compared to the importance of the extended family system. It is to cover up for your cousin who does not have money to eat. That is why when you have food, you send to him or her.”

She then goes on to paint scenarios of how people or communities help with social protection and the ripple effect it has towards the society. ‘The Ikorodu people when somebody dies, they say they want to do Iwolefu. What this means is that everybody brings something out to contribute to the funeral of that person. Even as Nigeria has been identified as a big economy, I don’t know how much of this has brought food to the dining table of many of us. Can you also imagine the millions of Nigerians who went to bed yesterday night without food? You would be amazed to find that millions of Nigerians are feeding from the drain, those are not socially protected.”

Tilley Gyado continued: “At the moment, it is the centre of development work because even with the MDG, things are not the way theyshould be. A lot of people living on less than a dollar per day are decreasing. There are many children who cannot go to school because their parents cannot afford it. There are so many children who are going to school without food because their parents cannot feed. And a child that goes to school without food, please tell me what would that child learn because before break time that child’s stomach is already talking?”

She added, “there are many children that are dying because their parents cannot afford access to medical care. The expenses at the point of treatment are ridiculous for many. I am giving you these examples because they are social protection issues. These are issues that address security and vulnerability of the individual and groups of people. For instance, when a bread winner dies, someone would be asked to wait, so that her brother goes to school. And guess who that usually is, it is the girl-child.”

Tilley Gyado then painted another scenario this way: “There are only three pieces of meat in the pot; your daddy would eat one and when he travels we would share the remaining over the week. That is social protection and we need to be careful with things that have adverse effect on shock, like Boko Haram, bomb explosion and armed robbery.”

These, she stressed, are events that are unpredictable but they can trigger somebody into abject poverty. “The father that died or the mother that was involved in an accident and could no longer go to the market would indirectly tear the family apart. There should be a determined source of income for everybody because that is a fundamental right. It is important to be able to have access to food and it is a fundamental right, not a privilege.

“I laugh when people talk about stomach infrastructure in Ekiti. I laugh because people sell their privilege to get their fundamental rights. It is your fundamental right to be able to eat; to work so that you can have the resources to feed yourself and your family. If you are a graduate and you have been marching the streets of kano, Lagos or Ado-Ekiti for about five years or more and you still do not have a job, then you have become a SAN (Senior Applicant of Nigeria). It is wrong and there is no social protection,” she concluded.