Ethics and Good Leadership Awareness Initiative, EGLAI, has urged Civil Society Organizations in Nigeria, CSOs to adopt self-regulatory practices by upholding ethical standards for good governance, accountability and expansion of civic space.
The team lead of EGLAI, Harry Udoh gave the advice in Port harcourt, Rivers State during a two day capacity building training on “Scaling adoption of CSO self-regulation in the South-South zone.”
Udoh explained that self regulation among CSOs has become important given concerns around accountability, misuse of funds, shrinking of civic space and regulatory overreach of government.
While stressing that CSOs are not averse to government regulations, he regretted the excessive regulatory laws in Nigeria against CSOs which according to him have become stifling even as he charged lawmakers to make laws that would promote and enhance the activities of CSOs not constrict them.
Udoh, however, urged the leaders of CSOs to adopt the EGLAI’s hybrid self-regulation models to engender accountability, build public and donor’s trust while safe guarding civic freedom. He added that such would give them the moral standing and place them in a vantage position to hold government accountable.
‘First of all, when you go to equity, you must go with clean hands and civil society holds government accountable all over the world. So we are saying for Nigerian civil society organizations to be able to hold government accountable, you need to, clean your hands. There’s a wrong perception about civil society organizations, perhaps, such may have been influenced by certain actions of some civil society actors.
“So what we are doing now is to then build capacity of civil society organizations to be able to implement self-regulation principles in the organizations, ethical principles and codes that help them to operate in a way that engenders trust, shows legitimacy and make themselves accountable, both to government and to regulators. That way we have more stable, resilient, trustworthy organizations who can then carry out their mandates of holding government accountable in a proper way, also providing service that is acceptable” he said.
Udoh also identified poor documentation and lack of internal policies as the challenge among CSOs and urged them to write reports of the events to members in their respective states on the need to comply with extant laws, even as he encouraged the Executive Directors to always carry their board members along.
Also, the EU project manager, Idem Udoekong, who spoke virtually challenged the CSOs to change the wrong perceptions people have about them by ensuring they uphold self regulation and purge themselves of any form of irregularity.
According to him,”business thrives based on how customers perceive your product, therefore you have to change every wrong public perception through self regulation.”
Udoekong also allayed fears that international funding is drying up following America’s withdrawal of funds to some African countries noting that, funds were only redirected even as he encouraged them to reposition themselves, show transparency and diligence in their operations as they will always access funding.
On his part, the program officer of EGLAI, Shiiwua Mnenga speaking on the standard operating procedures, urged CSO actors to uphold the minimum standards of operations saying, “Minimum standard of operations safeguard accountability, protect public trust, and turn good intentions into measurable impact.
“There are certain things we think we know, but they are not the way they should be. So the workshop is actually opening our eyes to those things that we need to do and how we need to do them and where we need to do them” he added.
