With hindsight, it would appear that the process was partly motivated by political calculations. Those of us who participated while it lasted saw a huge opportunity for oversight of governance output in the state. Whatever the deficit of that process, I believe that a bit of the idea for setting up the Office for Civic Engagement comes directly from that earlier effort. Hence, the point about an enduring sense of civic engagement. This is to be expected of a metropolis that Lagos is. By its very composition, it is the courtyard of different cultures translating into what may be called ‘Lagos life’.
In this sense, Lagos is a veritable civic sphere. A great deal of associational activities goes on here daily. It is not often clear how these are translated or converted to influence decision-making in the state. This is perhaps one of the justifications for a formal civic engagement with civic actors comprising social movements, non-government organisations, community development associations, labour and other related organisations. Therefore, civic space, is that sphere of unhindered state-society relations that translates into effective input to the decision-making process.
Transparency Accountability Initiative report underlines its essential features as well as importance as follows, “freedom and means to speak, access information, associate, organise, and participate in public decision-making – is essential to the healthy functioning and development of any society and a precondition for accountable governance and social justice. When civic space is restricted, human and civil rights are denied, government accountability is jeopardised, citizen voices are silenced, civic energy is sapped, confidence in state authorities is eroded and opportunities for dialogue and development are lost”.
Sarah E. Mendelson(Dark Days for Civil Society in Foreign Affairs), while reflecting on the repression of the civic space globally, also underlined the importance of civil society. According to her, civil society is central to the greatness of the United States as a strong democracy. We saw NGOs and foreign groups in action assisting in Liberia and Guinea during the Ebola crisis. They rose to the famine challenge in Kenya and it is doubtful how countries around the world will be able to bear future contingencies without robust civic groups.
Thus, it is clear that the civic actors have a role to play in the development of society. Scott London (Civil Society and the New Global Order). As Henderson noted (cited by London) civil society organisation such as NGOs are forward looking through “mapping social potentials.” Therefore civic engagement will help cure government from the ailment of insularity to “viable policy alternatives” and “pre-established social needs” by seeking “creative and innovative alternatives to social problems.” Civic engagement to paraphrase Michael Delli Carpini (cited in ‘Civic Engagement and the Arts: Issues of Conceptualization and Measurement’ by Mark J. Stern and Susan C. Seifert of University of Pennsylvania) is both individual and collective actions directed towards solving issues of public concern. This is why to Stern and Seifert, civic engagement is public, purposive and conscious engagement, not accidental.
While the creation of Office for Civic Engagement by the Lagos State government is laudable, its engagement should not end in occasional assembly such as this. There must be concrete engagement with the governance process in the state, providing alternative views to enrich policy and also to act as watchdog on the excesses of the government in the interest of the public, a somewhat realisation of Yurgen Habermas’s (See his The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1989 [1962]) notion of the bourgeois public sphere, that is “conceived above as the sphere of the private people come together as public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatised but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labour” (emphasis mine).
What I am saying is that civic engagement must translate into real participation which entails access and presence in the decision-making process; in other words, citizens’ involvement in the regulation of society and the state (C. B. Macpherson cited in Thomas Held, Models of Democracy). Its democratic essentiality, according to Carole Pateman, inheres in the fact that “participation develops and fosters the very qualities necessary for it [democracy]; the more individuals participate, the better able they become to do so.”
Let me wind up with a few suggestions for this engagement to be meaningful. Civic actors must be constructive actors in the process of governance in Lagos State. We must oversight government projects and critique policies; we must make reasonable input into executive bills (we hope we will not be hedged by the bureaucrats); participate in public hearing on bills in the house of assembly, proffer practical alternative solutions to social problems. More can be added to this by the participants in this event.
Dr. Akhaine, a visiting member of The Guardian Editorial Board, delivered this keynote address at the inaugural meeting of Lagos State Office of Civil Engagement, Thursday March 24, 2016.
