Civil Society Organisations (CSOs)

CSOs is a quarterly magazine that is focused on articulating and sharing civil society knowledge in Nigeria. In the sector there are a number of newsletters, mainly from human rights NGOs, which are published by individual organizations. These newsletters focus on the activities of the publishing organizations. No one publication is reflecting on the bigger picture in the sector. No one journal is providing the medium through which the state and the public can easily have a grasp of the happenings in the sector. No one newsletter is currently serving as a medium for dialogue across the sector. CSOs cover the sector analytically even as it serves as a medium for disseminating information on the sector. The magazine periodically analyzes the impact and influence of the sector and serves as a medium for sharing experience across the sector.

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Civil Society Annual Progress Report

This report will be a broad assessment of the impact of civil society in the different sectors of the polity; it will highlight landmark developments and achievements of the sector during the year. A kind of critical report card that gives the public a sense of the contributions and strength of the sector.

The report will look at the sector’s contributions in resolving thorny national problems like corruption, communal conflicts, accountability of public institutions, crime control, HIV pandemic, NEPAD, poverty alleviation etc. The report will also indicate progress made in the area of coalition building, sector expansion, sector resource base, ethics and accountability.

A session of the annual general conference will be devoted to discussing the civil society progress report. This report will be a path blazer for a wider impact assessment program of the sector. Assessing the impact of voluntary groups, NGOs, and charities can be an arduous task because the kind of goods they produce does not lend them to easy measurement. However, giving the amount of space that these groups occupy in public affairs, the need for them to account for their stewardship can no longer be excused. Currently, no group is doing what we are proposing to do. A couple of groups do publish annual reports of their activities though this culture is not widespread. Existing reports are tailored for funding agencies and the public rarely gets to know about them. Even when the public knows, it comes to them in scattered bits, in a manner that is almost incomprehensible. The annual progress report will serve as a collation pot, which enables the sector and the public to have a sense of overall developments in the sector.