Isiyaku Ahmed
The Nigeria report of the 2019 Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) Sustainability Index for Sub-Saharan Africa reveals that Nigerian CSOs have attained enhanced sustainability in advocacy for the first time in 11years.
The sustainability index survey is being implemented by Family Health International (FHI360) with funding from United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The Nigeria Index is implemented by the Centre for Research and Documentation (CRD) based in Kano on behalf of FHI360.
The index measures the trends in CSO activities across seven dimensions in 71 countries.
These dimensions include; Legal Environment, Organisation Capacity, Financial Viability, Advocacy, Service Provision, Sectoral Infrastructure and Public Image. Overall, CSO Sustainability in Nigeria recorded a slight improvement from the previous year.
Four dimensions showed improvement, while one recorded a decline.
CSO advocacy and service provision were moderately stronger, thanks to several important advocacy successes and the provision of a number of new services, including services related to the 2019 general elections.
CSOs’ organizational capacity improved slightly as the sector mobilized large numbers of temporary staff and volunteers during the 2019 elections.
CSOs also enjoyed a more positive public image thanks to media coverage of their election-related activities. However, the legal environment deteriorated slightly after two state governments introduced stringent new requirements and the federal government reintroduced the CSO Regulatory Commission Bill.
CSOs’ financial viability and sectoral infrastructure were unchanged from 2018. Figure 1 below shows the 2019 CSO Sustainability Index for Nigeria across the seven dimensions.
To access the full report use this link: https://storage.googleapis.com/cso-si-dashboard.appspot.com/Reports/CSOSI-Nigeria-2019.pdf
