No government can flourish without civil society support, says Irukera

Given the important role played by Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), in making government more accountable to the people, the Director-General of the Consumer Protection Council (CPC), Babatunde Irukera, has said no modern government can flourish in this era without civil society imputes.
Irukera said: “For credible, transparent and honest leadership to thrive in any nation, civil societies must be engaged positively by government because an engagement with the civil society is an engagement with the entire society, and this is my priority.”

The CPC boss said this at a one-day round table forum organised by the Council for Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Abuja.

The round table forum has as its theme, “Increasing Consumer Awareness Through Effective Participation of Non-Governmental Organisation.”
He said the new management has embarked on sanitising and scrutinising of all CSOs and NGOs registered with the Council, with a view to delisting quacks among them to pave the way for a better working relationship that would bring succour to millions of Nigerian consumers that have suffered poor quality services for long.

“Our process henceforth will be made more intense but transparent. Only those qualified and properly screened will get our registration certifications, because we want to continue to work and partner with you to liberate our consumers from high level impunity. I will also get to our donors to get you on board; we will no longer compromise customer subsidy, CPC will now become a secondary level dispute resolution avenue. We must take joint responsibility in educating the consumers, be it in the power sector, manufacturing and in construction industries.”

On the new innovations brought to the Council since he assumed office, the DG said: ‘’I inherited a broken council, people were not motivated , there was extreme  poor resources, both human and material, physical infrastructure were also poor and engagement with CSOs was randomly not structured, but I think all those are over.”

In a good will message to the forum, a Representative of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), Prof. Abimbola Uzoma, said to be able to reach the grassroots with their message, the CPC must work and collaborate with the CSOs .