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By Luminous Jannamike, Abuja

The European Union and the British Council have called for greater collaboration between civil society organizations and the government.

According to them, the such partnership will facilitate the mapping out of an enabling environment for the civil society sector in the country.

They made the call at the Knowledge-Share Fair held in Abuja on Thursday with the theme: ‘Nigerian CSOs Translating Knowledge to Capacity and Impact’.

Speaking, the National Program Manager, of the Agents for Citizen-Driven Transformation (ACT) program, Damilare Babalola, said the European Union and the British Council through the ACT program aim to facilitate relationships between government, CSOs and regulatory agencies to promote mutual understanding, enabling environment and sustainable development programs across the country

He noted that the European Union-funded ACT Programme was inaugurated in Nigeria on September 24, 2019, with the goal of contributing to inclusive, effective, responsible, and gender-responsive development in the country.

While lamenting the gap in the nongovernmental organizations, NGOs, Babalola said, “There are misconceptions that civil organizations are not regulated but the fact is that they are well regulated but there are issues around compliance but ACT seek to promote compliance.

“We also notice weak capacity in some CSOs. Civil society is part of the mechanism used to drive sustainable development globally they are involved in policy advocacy policy engagement at different levels hence we need them to have a strengthened capacity. They need to put the internal government in place, HR policies, account policy to aid their functionalities.”

He also said the government needed to understand the space before setting laws and regulations.

“Regulatory agencies should come out and sensitize civil society organizations on the need for regulations. The FIRS should come out and enlighten CSOs more about the taxes and the consequences of not complying. PENCOM should enlighten actors in CSOs the government shouldn’t make laws on assumption,” he noted.

In the same breath, Oyebisi Oluseyi, the Executive Director, of Nigeria Network of NGOs, NNNGO, said CSOs are interested in regulations that enables smooth operations but kicks against those that shrink civic space and stand against them performing social responsibilities to the communities they are meant to reach

Oluseye said, “We don’t want laws that will not allow us to do our work effectively. There’s a myth that non profit organizations are not regulated, but experience from what we have done showed that there are 54 existing laws that guide our operations.

We don’t want a law that will not allow us help the common man. If government policy is not working and we spark up, we don’t want a situation where the law will be used to arrest us. We also want to carry out projects in communities without government shrinking resources meant for community development projects,” Oluseyi noted.

Udo Ilo, the Senior Director for Advocacy, Center for Civilians in Conflict, The Hague, Netherlands, said CSOs must focus on programs that are sustainable, in line with the government policies and will impact the Nigerian community.

He emphasized on the need for CSOs to strengthen internal governance and control for accountability, public confidence and trust. He also urged Civil societies to engage with the government for more understanding.

While commending the European Union and the British Council for the ACT Program, Mina Ogbanga, chief operations officer, of Rivers Network of NGOs said Regulatory agencies should make policies easy for compliance and not make processes unnecessarily cumbersome especially when it comes to registration.