The following text is the keynote address at HBF Programme Review and Development Workshop, April 1, 2003. Bolaji Abdullahi, at the time ThisDay's Development Editor, takes a critical look at the emergence and current modes of operation of civil society and non-governmental organisations in Africa.

Civil Society: Where We Are; Where We Were Coming From

by Bolaji Abdullahi

Writing in 1992, Njuguna Ngeth'e noted that "what is believed about NGOs [and other civil society groups] frequently obscures what is known about them." Wachira Maina was to add that "five years later, much more is known about NGOs and civil society generally but, in some ways, there is… 'too much knowledge and not enough understanding (Maina in Van Rooy 1999:139)." My intention here is to try and contract this space between belief and knowledge about civil society in Nigeria and, more importantly, see if I can follow this line of knowledge to arrive at a greater understanding of where we stand as members of the civil society and where the next step or two should take us.

The first part of this paper will try to situate the civil society in a conceptual and ideological context as the first critical step in bridging the gap between belief and knowledge. The second part will examine the practical implications of these ideological and conceptual baggage for civil society in Nigeria, focussing especially on how it has shaped their nature, character and focus. I will then attempt to isolate the specific challenges that these present, and how we might want to take on these challenges.

The Ideology of Development and the Birth of Good Government

As far back as the 1960s through the early 70s, when most countries of Africa became independent, it was not uncommon to encounter opinions that summarily declared development efforts by post-colonial African leaders as failed. Implicit in this notion of failure is that some deliberate efforts have gone into the task of development in Africa. But as Claude Ake argued, the problem of Africa was not so much that of development failure, but that of development absence, especially when conceived as a framework for the economic transformation of the continent. The inheritors of power at the dawn of independence were so much concerned with the struggle for power and appropriating the privileges of offices vacated by the colonialists that little time was left for constructing any meaningful political agenda. The idea of development, if it existed at all, was only conceived as 'riot control' mechanism to contain the anger of the mass of the people who were becoming impatient when it appeared that the promised dividends of independence would not come. According to Ake, the political elite responded to this challenge by smartly appropriating the need for development and articulating it as the raison detre of their remaining in power. In actual fact, what they did was to push the burden of development to their foreign patrons, while they busied themselves plotting how to remain in power. "Thus, the ideology of development was exploited as a means of reproducing political hegemony; it got limited attention and served hardly any purpose…(Ake, 1996: 8)."

Foreign governments on their own part saw in the development gap created by the ineptitude of post-colonial African leaders a space for expanding their foreign policy objectives or promoting their neo-colonial interests. Most African countries became independent at the height of the cold-war, when Western powers, led by the United States, were pitched in ideological 'fight-to-finish" with the Communist Soviet Union. Thus, the newly emergent African nation states were seen as beautiful brides that each super power would do anything to have in bed, if not for any other reason, but so the other actor did not get her. They were therefore, ready to make up for the failings of the new African leaders and keep them in power in return for their loyalty, by picking up their bills, and making them look serious at home by helping to give a semblance of reality to their grand deception at development. Many of these so-called African leaders were, in fact, only a little better than thugs. Many of them lacked legitimacy among the people, their were extremely prebendal, irresponsible and murderous. But within the imperatives of the cold war environment, what mattered was 'good government', defined as any government that was 'ideologically correct' and was willing to stay in line.

The 'Good Governance' Project and the Construction of Civil Society

While the concept of 'civil society' had gained good currency in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, its resurgence, especially in recent development discourse coincided with the end of the cold war and the triumph of the neo-liberal ideology. With the end of the cold war, western governments no longer saw the need to keep in power, corrupt and illegitimate governments in different parts of the world. Within the post-cold war imperialistic calculations of the western governments, it became necessary to review the notion of 'good government.' The triumph of the neo-liberal ideology led to the celebration of the market as the new locus of justice and efficiency, and led to an unprecedented assault on the ability of the state to serve as the agency of development and economic growth. It was this imperatives of market-centred development that dictated the need to cultivate the 'private' sphere and the 'private entrepreneur' as agents of development and which subsequently led to what I will call the renaissance of the civil society as a counter hegemony to the state within the paradigm shift from 'good government' to 'good governance.' The good governance concept itself was articulated around four fundamentals of transparency, accountability, efficiency and the rule of law. These were supposed to be the inegotiable code of conducts for any government that hopes to operate in a new, modern, market led economy, and it is important to bear in mind that these fundamentals were articulated mainly in terms of their capacity to enhance the efficiency of the market. But left to themselves alone, the governments of developing countries, so perniciously sold to rent-seeking, could not be trusted to abide by these code of conducts by themselves. Therefore, there was the need to nurture a counter-hegemony that could challenge the state and hold it down to these principles, and even act in apposition to the state in the delivery of certain services and goods.

Howell and Pearce, following Hall and Simon (1991) noted that the civil society gained currency even within academic discourse "to conceptualise effective challenges to oppressive state systems" and act as "counter hegemony" to the power of the state (2001: 146) . However, it is important to bear in mind also that the early '90s was the period when the International Financial Institutions, led by the IMF, were selling the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) to developing countries of the world as the cure-all solution to their perilous balance of payment deficits and the only way to save their countries from sure perdition. In no time, it became clear however, that SAP, rather than bring the much-expected relief to the patient, actually complicated her case, and soon, her swollen belly exploded, spilling hunger, anger and misery into the streets of many developing countries. And as life became unbearable under the toxic after-effect of SAP, new voices began to emerge, calling, not for the abolition of SAP, but for the adoption of another brand of the magic formula, which this time must have a 'human face.' By this time, however, SAP had further eroded whatever was left of the legitimacy of the state, and it soon became clear even to western apostles of SAP that some kind of response was necessary. But instead of re-assessing its entire development strategy, more so, when it was clear that SAP had never worked anywhere, the blame was heaped on the state as the harbinger of the misery because of its mismanagement of SAP.

Thus, the problem of bad policy was repackaged as a governance problem and the newly bolstered civil society did not hesitate to put the government to task. But this is only one aspect of the civil society brief. It was also expected to act as alternative deliverers of social services and welfare in the face of state incapacity. As the state became more and more hopeless, the civil society was being primed and strengthened for the challenge of human suffering and empowerment in its diverse ramification, including those brought about by the 'side effects' of capitalist development. As Howell and Pierce submitted succinctly, "civil society emerged as a way of resisting authoritarian rule, asserting new moral order and establishing the values of individual freedom and autonomy (2001:147)."

NGO Manufacturing and 'Designer' Civil Society

The first response to the popularity of civil society by donor agencies was to begin to restructure and set up specialised departments and units to fit the new trend, and these new organs began to devise strategies and programmes for creating, supporting and strengthening civil society. The largest funders of civil society is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which in 1995 was said to have accounted for 85 per cent of all civil society assistance (Van Rooy and Robinson, 1999: 60). There are also the United States Information Agency (USIA), quasi-governmental agencies like National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute, the Carter Centre etc: These agencies were concerned primarily with promoting democratisation and their support was directed mainly at advocacy groups involved in human rights, women's rights, environment and electoral reforms (Howell and Pierce, 2001: 149). There were also the multilateral agencies like the UNDP, European Union, the UK Directorate of Foreign and International Development; the German Foundations, and global financial institutions, especially the World Bank. These institutions all reacted differently to the emergence of the civil society discourse, and they all have their own different attitudes and understanding of the role the civil society should play depending on how they construct and construe it. While the UNDP seems to hold the "creation" of a virile civil society as an end in itself, for many others, especially the Americans, it is for enhancing the effectiveness of development aids, which was necessitated by the budget cuts that followed the end of the cold war; and to promote democracy and good governance. When it set up a new Centre for Democracy and Governance in 1994, USAID declared thus:

"Interest in civil society, in USAID and among other donors, reflects a growing realisation that sustaining newly emerging democracies will depend on building autonomous centres of social and economic power that promote accountable and participatory governance (cited in Howell and Pierce, 2001:152-153)"

For the World Bank, the civil society is useful largely in building consensus around the Structural Adjustment and the neo-liberal policies emerging from Washington, especially beginning from the Jim Wolfehsohn presidency, which initiated a rethinking of state-market relations within the Bank, against the backdrop of harsh criticism from Northern NGOs. As a way of deflecting attention from the tortuous argument about the relative importance of state and market, Bank in the 1997 World Development Report, sought to shift its focus by empasising the need for complementarity between the two and the need to also bring in the civil society. Soon after this, the relationship between the Bank and the NGOs moved from that of confrontation to co-operation and by the year 2000, Bank included civil society along with government and business as key partners in the development process:

Understanding the process of development requires acknowledging both its complexity and the context in which it operates. Simple solutions-investments in physical and human capital, for instance and unfettered markets - will not work in isolation. Governments, the private sector, civil society and donor organisations need to work together in support of broad-based development (World Bank, 2000:30).

For the DFID, civil society is also part of the post-cold war governance agenda and the emergence of the good governance discourse. The Secretary of State, Clare Short declared in 1999 thus:

"Southern NGOs have a crucial role in helping people to realise their human rights and demand improvements in the provision of core government services such as health and education. They can help ensure greater equity in resource allocation, with resources focussed on the priorities of the poor and other excluded groups. And they have a vital part to play in ensuring that public services are made more accessible to excluded groups (Howell and Pierce 2001: 160).

The next most important challenge that faced the donors was how to create civil society where none exist and strengthen them where they are weak? Their response to what they consider to be a vacuum or an absence of civil society is manufacturing of NGOs, tailor made to fit their individual agendas and interests, and which they actively nurtured through funding, technical advice, training etc. One donor even produced a manual on how to set up NGOs. There is a fundamental assumption that the donors brought into their engagement with the civil society, especially in Africa. We shall soon return to this. But for now, it is very important to bear in mind how most of our NGOs emerged, and the implications this has on their relationship to the donors on the one hand and the people on whose behalf they purport to be operating on the other.

Donors, NGOs and the Fallacy of Partnership

The question of 'power' (who's in charge?) was one of the testy areas in the emerging relationship between the donors and the civil society, especially as state actors began to label the NGOs as stooges of western imperialism. And soon, a new language emerged in form of partnership that was meant to not only to guide the relationship, but also to bring in the state and the market actors together in an expanded coalition. The discourse of partnership was based on four poles: the state, market, civil society and donor agencies, which again, was rapidly incorporated into donor speeches. In 1994 UNDP said thus: "until five years ago, civil society was seen as an alternative to government programmes, as service-delivery. Now it is about partnership." The following year, USAID declared after the World Summit for Social Development, what it called New Partnership Initiatives aimed at empowering NGOs, creating small business partnerships and fostering local governance. The World Bank also followed the discourse of partnership by developing what it called "Corporate Citizenship Team." As for DFID, Secretary of State, Clare Short, declared in a speech at Conference on 'NGOs in a Global Future' in 1999, thus: "There is clearly an important role for NGOs to build stronger partnerships with the trade union movement, the private sector and financial institutions to strengthen the ethical consumer movements to uphold the basic labour environmental standards." According to Howell and Pierce, "underpinning the striving towards positive interaction between the civil society and the state is a shift in thinking away from positioning these three corners as diametric and antagonistic opposites," and expand the basis for co-operation and contract the space for antagonism (2001: 168).

The discourse of partnership is however very problematic because of the many assumptions on which it was premised. One of these assumptions, like Howell and Pierce pointed out, is that these various actors, the state, the market, the civil society, the donors, all share a common vision, common interests and common understanding of what needs to be done about what and in what order of importance. The discourse of partnership assumes that there is a consensus among the various actors on what constitute the common good, if there is any, and left hanging as it were, how these differences, differences of vision, differences of interests, differences of expectations, could be reconciled. The truth, as Howell and Pierce aptly noted however, is that there cannot be partnership between unequals. It is important to note that while the state, the market and the civil society slug it out within their national boundaries, the fourth actor comes in as a disinterested umpire that can do the magic of reconciling the interests of these warring factions, whose overall interests it purports to know best. And like Howell and Pierce noted again, "the appearance of neutrality serves inadvertently, or indeed intentionally, as a powerful political tool for furthering particular agendas for the broker appears not to have any agenda of their own, to be value-free and ideologically open, beyond capture by competing discourses (2001: 188)." The discourse of partnership, like the discourse of civil society itself, with its assumption on universality, therefore mask in important ways, the vertical and horizontal inequalities across, for example, class and gender.

A corresponding fallacy of partnership is also that of civil society as universal concept. This universality, as Howell and her colleague also pointed out, tends to assume that civil society within nation-states is homogenous in moral purpose and values and even tends to assume that for the whole world there is one civil society. And with the dominance of American discourse in this field, it is of little surprise that the dominant narrative of civil society is one which accepts as civil society those institutions that conform with the American understanding: NGOs, churches, clubs, etc, but reject as traditional and backward, informal organisation based on kinship through which much of civil society in Africa expresses itself.
Within the scope of donor vision of civil society, the most visible are the NGOs, which are viewed as the natural component of civil society. Therefore, where there are no NGOs, it means civil society does not exist, and it must be created. This is the assumption I was coming to earlier. Like Wachira Maina noted, many donors make this mistake of equating the civil society with NGOs, thereby failing to appreciate the complexities of associational life in Africa, which "blinds investigators to the fact that much of associational life in Africa takes place outside the formal groups (Van Rooy 1999: 135)." Carothers (1999) also argues similarly that donors have largely failed to appreciate "the complexities of social and political life in different contexts and to ignore socially and politically significant organisations which do not neatly correspond to mainstream American understanding of civil society actors (Howell and Pierce, 2001: 192)."

Howell and Pierce also pointed out some of the key disadvantages of NGO manufacturing. One is that they lack distinct social constituency of support and any political or social meaning for local communities. Many lack democratic content and lack legitimacy as vehicles of social and political change. Specifically, what gets elevated as core agenda, are not necessarily what the NGOs are convinced to be the priorities of their constituencies, even if they have any. Rather, you find NGOs, competing for funds from donors and doing their best to tailor proposals to suit what the donors consider as the immediate challenge or priority. You even find NGOs who work with and receives funds from two or more ideologically opposed donors. A brief example; between January and March 2002, one donor agency disbursed a total of $4.5 million to 25 NGOs in Nigeria. Some of these funds are expected to be used in campaigning against unwanted pregnancy. So, one begin to wonder, whose agenda exactly is this "unwanted pregnancy" business? Who decides, which pregnancy is wanted and which is unwanted? The moral here is that most often, NGOs find themselves executing the preconceived ideas of what civil society should do by western donors, rather than following their own understanding of problems that they consider central to their lives and their own understanding of the solutions; or even more importantly, genuinely representing the voice of the people on whose behalf they claim to work.

Conclusion

I had set out in this paper to trace the development of the discourse of civil society and how it applies to recipient countries. I also tried to assess our understanding of how this historical specificity connects broadly with the emergence of civil society groups in Africa, and how it shaped their behaviour, character, their understanding of themselves; how others understands them and how these two connect to produce a civil society, defined largely as NGOs that is artificial and socially dislocated, leaving the traditional arena of civil society under-developed and disconnected.

I identify specific challenges for civil society groups in the on-going democratic dispensation, I will focus specifically on the challenge pose by, at the supra-national level, globalisation, and at the national level, privatisation. Globalisation has been celebrated as the 21st century phenomenon that has the capacity to bring together people everywhere, more than ever before. What is clear however, is that globalisation comes with so much discontent, and instead of bringing people together, it is actually widening the gap between the rich and the poor of the world. Never before has the human race witnessed so much prosperity, and never before has it witnessed so much human deprivation. Like the South Commission noted in 1997, "Inequalities tend to widen as the economy grow and become more industrialised…Increasingly, the rich and powerful in the countries of the south are able to enjoy the life-style and consumption patterns of developed countries of the North…The worst sufferers…were usually the most vulnerable of the poor: women, children and other socially disadvantaged groups, (South Commission, in Thomas and Wilkin, 1997:5)

Francis Fukuyama wrote soon after the Soviet Union collapsed that "What we may be witnessing is…the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalisation of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government' (Fukuyama,1992: 4). Capitalism is organically connected to democracy in such a way that they provide a raison detre for each other. Like Mabogunje argued recently, capitalism offers the only sure path to sustained growth and development. The path to capitalism in every society is the commodification of all factors of production, which is expected to confer market values on them. But like Caroline Thomas noted "the emphasis on selling one's labour, paid employment and commodification has in certain important respects decreased, rather than increased an individual's or a community's control and self-determination over their life-chances, and place more power in the hands of either the market or the government (in Thomas and Wilkin, 1997:5)." The globalisation of capital has serious implications for people everywhere and like Thomas rightly noted, it is "those without the necessary, social or political power that are excluded from the benefits: thus the liberal ideology is legitimising global inequalities of life-chance, it is legitimising a situation where inequalities are greater than at any period in history."

At the national level, privatisation has been one of the major economic policy thrust of the Nigerian government. Privatisation is aimed at increasing efficiency and productivity and minimising waste. But like Joseph Stiglitz noted, "moving people from low-productivity jobs in state enterprises to unemployment does not increase a country's income, and it certainly does not increase the welfare of the workers…Privatisation therefore, needs to be part of a more comprehensive programme, which entails creating jobs in tandem with the inevitable job destruction that privitisation entails. Macro-economic policies, including low interest rates, that help to create jobs, have to be put in place. Timing and sequencing is everything (Stiglitz, 2002:58)."

In the last few months, the Bank and the IMF have agreed to assess the poverty and social impact of the policies proposed in their loans. The Poverty and Social Impact Policy (PSIA) is intended to encourage national debate about social and economic policies and make clear to everyone what rationale drives their reform proposals and conditionalities. The Bank has focussed on the likely impacts of tax increases, subsidy reforms, exchange rate shifts, civil service downsizing, energy price reforms, and the size of fiscal deficit. The Bank also intends to pursue policies that would mitigate the adverse effects of these reforms.

As commendable as these are, the Bank PSIA has been widely criticised, not only for its credibility -the Bank funds, commissions, and in most cases, carries out the research- but also because it forecloses all other policy alternatives, and concern itself only with 'mitigating' the adverse consequence of its reforms. Like one analyst noted, "they do not question whether or not this reform is appropriate or the optimal one for poverty reduction": Privatisation, liberalisation, deregulation are the only way to go, no question. But there has to be questions, because these policies hardly have anything to do with poor people.

When the Bank and the IMF brought the Poverty Reduction Strategy Process (PRSP) in 1999 the declared intention was to put national government and the civil society in charge of defining what policies the Bank and the Fund should support. But almost four years on, it has become clear that the Bank and its sister would not let go, and the only policy options permissible are still within the orthodox neo-liberal framework.

Therefore, the challenges for civil society in Nigeria, as in other parts of Africa, in respect of globalisation and privatisation is to build a knowledge capacity that will enable them articulate an agenda that would prioritise the elimination of the negative consequences of both and be able to make productive demands from the governance system, both at the local and global level.

References:
Ake C., (1996). Democracy and Development in Africa, Washington, Brookings Institution
Howell J., Pearce J., (2001). Civil Society and Development, A Critical Reader
Van Rooy A., (1999). Civil Society and the Aid Industry, London, Earthscan
Sitglitz J., (2002). Globalisation and Its Discontents, London, Allen Lane
______(1997). The State in A Changing World, World Development Report, 1997, Oxford, World Bank
Thomas C., and Wilkin P., (1997). Globalisation and the South, London