Before and after independence, Nigeria
has never for once been immune from various socioeconomic and political
problems at local, state and federal levels. Some of the problems have been driven
by the perceived social, economic and political inequalities, and natural
factors. As a country, these issues are expected be solved and resolved towards
prosperous society for everyone to live.
In this regard, governments, non-state
actors, citizens and civil society organisations are highly needed in policies
and programmes formulation, execution and evaluation. From the north to the
east, and the west to the south region, there are thousands of non-governmental
organisations working with the governments and other stakeholders addressing
social, economic or political issue at local, state and federal levels.
Across the country, social issues,
economic inequality, civil and political rights have been the main problems
Nigerians want concerned stakeholders to address in the last 5 years.
Within economic inequality, people and
businesses want social inequality to be addressed by governments and civil
society organisations. For the civil and political rights, Nigerians’ position
has been that non-governmental organisations need to pay specific attention to
civil rights more than political rights considering the fact that political
elites are being favoured than the less privilege who lack political power that
could be exploited to their advantage while having issues that need political
solutions.
Our analysis further indicates that Nasarawa, Kaduna, Osun, Ondo and
Oyo states have been the states where the interest in social issues such as
insecurity, truancy, inadequate facilities, human trafficking and drug abuse
have been huge in the last 5 years.
To address these challenges individuals
and businesses expect civil society organisations, especially socioeconomic and
political focused non-governmental organisations to complement governments’
efforts in finding sustainable solutions to the problems using research driven
policies and advocacy campaigns that left no one behind in the formulation,
implementation and evaluation of the outcomes. Rather than focusing on mere
advocacy, public want a combination of policy and legal advocacy, a situation
where NGOs challenge or propose policy areas to the governments or concerned
stakeholders and follow it with legal actions (where necessary).
From the analysis, we found that people
in Ekiti (100%) and Osun (91%) states had significant interest in research as a
potential tool for NGOs to provide sustainable advocacy campaigns and
evaluation than people in other Southwestern states (Oyo=74%, Ogun=73%,
Ondo=72% and Lagos=51%) between 2014 and 2019.
In the
next few years, a non-governmental organisation that has a better understanding
of research and its application will attract more funds from local and
international donors than an establishment with the insipid skills and
techniques.
By
2020, donors would not spend their money on organisations without adequate
understanding and application of innovative research designs to socioeconomic
and political problems because the world will have a few years to attain the
socioeconomic and political issues in the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda
2030. To avoid being neglected by the
donors, Nigerian NGOs must understand how to conduct high-impact researches
that inform advocacy and policy engagement.
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