National Assembly complex in Abuja
Liberty groups decry repressive regulatory environment
Groups that stand for civil rights and accountability in Nigeria have raised concerns over persistent moves by political groups to gag their members through laws that could curb their campaigns and advocacies.
The civil society organizations or CSOs call for protection from proposed laws that be repressive in against movements that protect and preserve civil rights in the country.
The groups declared their fears over emerging laws that target them during the first national conference on Civil Society Operational Environment hosted in Abuja. They said tranches of policies and legislative proposals have been contrived to curb the capacity of liberty groups in the country.
The conference programme was supported by the European Union Delegation to Nigeria and West Africa and EU-Agents for Citizen-driven Transformation (ACT) Programme through a collaboration of EU-ACT Programme, Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) and USAID-Strengthening Civic Advocacy and Local Engagement (SCALE) aimed at improving the civil society regulatory environment in Nigeria.
The objective is to generate shared understanding and collective perspectives by stakeholders on appropriate instruments of regulation and effective processes to regulate CSOs operation in Nigeria as well as increase broad public awareness about the roles of CSOs and the need for an enabling regulatory environment that protects the sector from repressive legislation.
Programmes Manager at Global Rights, Edosa Oviawe, declared at a media briefing that despite the availability of over a dozen legislations and policies that currently guide the activities of the not for-profit sector, at least five attempts by different regulatory agencies including the National Assembly (NASS) have been made in the past decade to introduce new legislations and policies to further regulate CSOs.
He said the new attempts at further laws did not make any allusion to existing ones.
“Instead, a misguided perception continues to expand the narrative among these regulatory agencies that CSOs are not adequately regulated.
“Although the need for capacity improvement and enabling regulatory environment require attention to strengthen CSOs operations in Nigeria, it is, however, expedient to address the concerns around the regulatory framework as several issues embedded therein need to be clarified in order to clear the air of the current state of confusion among all concerned stakeholders.
“It is on this premise that the EU-ACT has collaborated with the National Steering Committee on Civil Society Regulatory Environment to host this three-day national conference which is designed as a response to address some of these concerns.
“Currently, there is no unified perspective about what should constitute a body of regulations for CSOs and this has resulted in various interpretations by different actors on how the sector should be regulated. Unless resolved and properly clarified, this issue of multiple definitions will continue to put both regulatory agencies to the boxing of CSO regulations within the broad civic space narrative, where all forms of government repressive actions to the generality of her citizens are interpreted as clamping down on civil society, “ they group said.
The CSOs said there is a concern about the low level of awareness of existing regulations among relevant stakeholders, including CSOs/NGOs and regulators despite the existence of over a dozen legislations.
The deputy ambassador and head, Politics, Press and Information section of the EU, Elexandre Borges Gomes, said they are great fans of the CSOs in Nigeria and will support them to promote good governance and democracy.
