Cooptation and contention: Public participation in the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and the demand for accountable government

Abstract

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) expects that disclosures of financial flows in the different stages of the extractive business would spur public response against corruption and encourage citizens’ participation in the affairs of the state. However, NGOs have not effectively utilised the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) audits to mobilise public demand for accountable government. I argue that the depoliticising logic of the governance paradigm that conflates the professionalized NGO with civil society undermines public participation. Moreover, the EITI serves to legitimize ongoing extraction: For instance the World Bank Group employs the mechanism as a fulcrum of its response to groups’ calls for substantive changes to oil industry management that would protect human rights, livelihoods and national sovereignty. By entrenching the involvement of a few NGOs in its processes, the EITI has had a limited resonance in public discourse and social actions. In contrast, mass mobilisations in Nigeria demanding government accountability, such as the January Uprising of 2012, spurred more significant disclosures about mismanagement of public revenues than NEITI, and reflected a resurgence of the vibrant 1990s civil society platform and mass movements which had been muted under neoliberal democratic transition.