From Nabob Ogbonna, Abakaliki
A Non Governmental Agency under the auspices of Ethics and Good Leadership Awareness Initiative (EGLAI) yesterday charged members of Civil Society Organizations to build stronger ties with their counterparts across the 6 geo-political zones in Nigeria so as to achieve synergy and advancement of their respective goals.
The group said the approach is still operational in developed countries like America which has the highest number of registered Civil Society Organizations, but drive their goals through collective mechanisms.
Mr. Harry Udoh, the Executive Director of the group gave this charge on Wednesday during his opening remarks at a 3-day workshop, organized for civil society organizations in South East region, held in Enugu the state capital.
Udoh who said the workshop was to set constitutional boundary in control of CSOs operations in Nigeria, noted that his organization (EGLAI) as an Ombudsman, is charged with the responsibilities in achieving financial accountability and transparency of CSOs in Nigeria.
“And as an Ombudsman, we are charged with the responsibilities of ensuring financial accountability and transparency of your operations in Nigeria. Again, we also want you (CSOs), to build stronger ties with your counterparts across other geopolitical zones of the nation in line with the approved ethnical practices.
“This is obtainable and operational in developed countries in the world including America where there is highest number of CSOs,”he stated.
The executive director of EGLAI who further called on participate to facilitate adherence to the proposed self regulations mechanism in their respective states, reminded the body (CSOs) of their critical roles in advancement of good governance at the grassroot levels.
“We support CSOs in Nigeria, we support civil society network in effort to facilitate adherence to self regulations by subscribers. And at the end of this workshop, you are expected to ensure that the mechanism are adopted in your various states.
“This is because CSOs plays a critical roles in advancement of good governance at the grassroots level, essentially in the areas of health, education and politics,”he maintained.
Also, the Programme Information Officer EGLAI, Mr. Chiiwua Mnenga who spoke on the topic: “Nigerian CSOs minimum standard of operations, said beyond statutory compliance, public trust, legitimacy and effectiveness are needed in operations which should be in line with the international standard.
“These laws provide the legal foundation for CSOs existence and activities across the country.
“But beyond the statutory compliance public trust, legitimacy and effectiveness are strengthened and when CSOs voluntarily commit to higher standards public trust is achieved.
“In this regards CSO networks and platforms in Nigeria have collectively adopted minimum operational standards with principles of self regulations which are inline with international best practices,”he stated.
However, the workshop which had also the presence of journalists and funded by Europe Union was on “Scaling the adoption of self-regulations in Nigeria, zonal capacity building for CSOs champion and subnational network leads in South East.
