Development

Freeing up the third sector

2001-05-21, Issue 22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/1106

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On average it takes anything from 18 months to 3 years to register a charitable association in Nigeria. Generally referred to as Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) – which itself is a misnomer - these are in law, associations or bodies corporate with or without separate legal personality or land-holding capacity. Typically, they are formed for philanthropic purposes and run by trustees, whatever their preferred title. My beef in this essay is with the current slow and bureaucratic process of registration and supervision of what has become a key alternative and complementary channel of development for our people.



By Kachi Okezie, POLICY magazine

030301



In the UK – where I practice - the voluntary sector has come to be known as the “third” sector of the economy, after the public and private sectors. Here, there are currently over 400,000 registered voluntary organisations, including 190,000 active charities, altogether turning over an estimated £24 billion per annum (Office of National Statistics, 1999). The sector engages 23 million people including unpaid volunteers and paid employees, with an annual spending of £11 billion and growing.

The Charity Commission is the government department created to help charities utilise their resources more effectively and to ensure that the public's trust in charities continues to be justified. Essentially this role is both supportive and supervisory. Supportive of a sector recognised as a growth sector, creating employment and contributing to the national economic vibrancy. Supervisory of the overall activities of charities to maintain public confidence and protect the public against abuse, bearing in mind that this is largely a donor society.

In Nigeria, the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) is the government agency charged with matters of corporate governance, including incorporation and regulation of bodies corporate. This is comparable to the UK Companies House. But the regulation of charitable associations tends to fall upon the Ministry of Justice - the Federal Attorney General - to be exact. And it is here that the bottleneck lies.

There is every good reason for the regulation of charitable associations and their trustees; no one denies that. The difficulty lies in understanding the specific policy direction of such regulation. What does it aim to achieve, overall? Is it to support and advance the sector or is to regulate for its own sake, in other words, “regulate to strangulate”.

In the UK it takes on average 4 to 6 weeks to complete registration of a Charity, less for a company limited by guarantee. The name-search is available on the Internet between 9am and 8pm (Monday to Friday). I have actually done UK searches while in Abuja! The fees are official and known to all and there are no bribes. If there are hitches, you are promptly informed by phone, fax or email. Overall, you are supported throughout the process in an incredibly pleasant and polite manner. This is largely because your potential contribution to the sector is understood and valued. And this is in a donor-society!

Against the above grain, I ask: Why does it take up to 2 years to complete registration of charitable associations in Nigeria – a country with all to gain from the active stimulation of the third sector through which impoverished and marginalised local communities can access development aid kindly and generously provided by benefactors worldwide? What business has a donor-recipient, third world nation with an unflattering GDP, restricting a viable source of development inflow, under the guise of regulation? What is the policy basis, if any, for such regulation?

Some might tender the demands of state security as a rationale for the fervent control of NGOs in Nigeria, the imperative being to ensure that only “trusted” associations and individuals are allowed to operate in the sector. But this argument falls to pieces against contemporary experience where the profit-seeking public and private sectors are actively encouraged to attract foreign investment, with little if any fetters.

I locate the real reason for this irrational anxiety over the growth of the NGO sector in our recent military past. It is a throwback of dictatorships seized by a paranoid disposition which rendered them insecure and suspicious of anything they didn’t fully understand. There is in the present democratic dispensation no place for such retrograde influences on developmental or any other policy, for that matter.

Government policy should not only welcome the growth of the voluntary (NGO) sector, but also embrace its ethos of selflessness and altruism. I know of many international foundations that have provided opportunities for some of our leaders past and present to improve their education and careers. I also know of no past American President or comparable world leader who has not retired into active philanthropy. Yet, conversely, I struggle to identify one of our own equivalent who is remotely engaged in this area.

Only last month I toured Nigeria with representatives of Mercyships, the international Christian charity whose hospital ships have for the past 22 years visited over 40 countries - most of them in Africa - bringing hope and healing to those in real need. Wherever they’ve been, local people have received FREE medical assistance including surgeries they could never have been able to afford, education and training in healthcare and hygiene. They have built sanitation facilities, clinics, maternities and water projects in rural communities, again completely FREE!

Recently, a Scottish chap who felt that Africans had suffered too much in the world stakes decided to do something to help remedy this inequity. He donated £4.7 million to buy a new 300-bed 16,000 tonne hospital ship to be named the “Africa Mercy”. This is the ship we hope will visit Nigeria sometime soon.

Perhaps there is a lesson in philanthropy for some of our own rich and powerful. As for the government, an immediate root and branch shake-up of the regulatory process to free the NGO sector from its current gridlock of bureaucracy and corruption is the least that is required. The process should be streamlined and all potential bottlenecks identified and removed. Computerising the entire system naturally makes sense, although a computer is useless without a will to improve systems. Regional decentralisation of the process should be considered urgently. In particular, a downward review of the registration fees should be explored. Targets should be set for number of registrations completed within the shortest time frame and (as obtains here in the UK) all personnel are under a duty to maintain statistics on their work, from which annual data are collated. Corruption should be visited with strict consequences and the public should be encouraged to report cases of corrupt demands by public officials, without fear of backlash.
To Mr President, therefore, one says, government’s inability to deliver development to all is bad enough, but understandable. But failure to facilitate free development inflow from alternative sources, thereby denying ordinary people access to the world’s good gifts, is one sin Nigerians will struggle to forgive.

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