A Civil Society Organisation, #OurMumuDonDo Movement, will on Monday January 11, 2019, in Abuja launch Nigerians’ Social Contract Initiative to engage and enlighten the citizens on accountable democracy.
Charles Oputa, popularly called ‘Charly Boy‘, the group’s National Convener, disclosed this at press conference in Abuja at the weekend.
He said the project was aimed at enlightening the citizens about Nigeria’s democratic process as well as transferring the ownership of the democratic process to the citizens, thereby enabling them to engender accountable democracy.
He stressed that the electorate and voting population must understand and reconstruct their engagement with the democratic process as the “real owners” of government and the Nigerian project, people’s participation and commitment to the electoral and political processes would continue to depreciate.
According to him, “As an organisation advocating for social change, we believe that for there to be a stable and progressive society, there must be some established norms guiding the relationship between the people and the government of the state.
“These established norms will define mutual obligations between the people and their leaders at the national and sub-national levels of government. These mutual obligations will form the nucleus of the agreement that we call the Social Contract.
“The Nigerian Social Contract Initiative, loosely translated as NaWeBeGovernment, is an initiative of the Omudodu Youths Foundation, aka OurMumuDonDo Movement, designed to enlighten the citizens about Nigeria’s democratic process as well as transfer the ownership of the democratic process to the citizens thereby enabling them to engender accountable democracy.”
Oputa pointed out that the social contract initiative would improve citizens’ participation in the democratic process as well as increase the trust of the electorates in Nigeria’s electoral process.
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He stressed that the Initiative was in line with the 2019 general elections being proposed as a model for reviewing and determining the commitment of politicians and political parties in the Nigerian polity.
“Our movement, with support from the Ford Foundation and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) (Youth Alive Foundation) embarked on opinion surveys across the country using questionnaires and also through town hall engagement to gather information on the knowledge of the social contract among citizens.
“When we started the Nigerian Social Contract Initiative in June 2018, we realised that there was insufficient information on youth and citizens’ knowledge and engagement with the social contract as a tool for promoting good governance in Nigeria.
“This propelled us to conduct a survey to obtain baseline information about citizens’ knowledge of social contract and their level of engagement with government, using available spaces and legal frameworks, to demand accountability and good governance,” he added.
