Two Decades of Civil Society Activism and Advocacy: Navigating the Labyrinth of the Development and Security Agenda in Southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

In the last two decades of democratic governance in Nigeria, the civil society organizations (CSOs), which form a large group of vocational, social, political, cultural, educational, and religious volunteer activists, are reputed for building local capacity and advocating with and for the poor, with a relatively visible impact on policy and practice. This paper builds on existing literature concerning how the empirical realm of civil society, to which advocacy is most directly related, has been utilized within the three different components of a comprehensive advocacy strategy– transformational (citizen empowerment), developmental (civil society strengthening) and instrumental (policy influence). Drawing from the perspectives of multi-sectoral, territorial, and local approaches, the paper also examines how development partners, practitioners and researchers can actively enhance civil society's resilience and sustainability to influence pro-poor policies and promote the developmental agenda in southwestern Nigeria. It specifically focuses on the mechanism for connecting the objectives and resources developed by Nigeria's six southwestern states through their Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) commission at the regional level as they relate to the problems and priorities that apply at the rural community level where the majority of the citizens reside.