Paper short abstract:

This paper promises to highlight issues and factors which account in part for the noticeable decline in active civil society activism and its implication for virile representative governance

Paper long abstract:

Civil society - organised labour, professional bodies, associations and unions - plays significant roles in strengthening the government process as organized platform for constant engagement with elected and appointed public office holders. They call for reforms clean up the polity and attend to the yearnings and aspirations of the people. However, picture derivable from the Nigerian democratic experience in the last one decade of civilian rule suggest otherwise. Indicators of this include the disposition of the electorate towards their representatives on accountability and constituency relation. Individually or collectively, electorates have not posed sustained concrete challenge to their elected representatives through organized avenues for ventilation of grievances or calling representative to account. There has not been effective deployment of organized platforms for the conscious socio-political engineering and the attendant civic spirit which is a desirable condition for viable democratic spirit in the citizenry. However, the dominant faiths - Christianity, Islam, and traditional beliefs - and their leaders, have relatively strong influence in politics as in other sub-sectors of the society. Much the same are the dynamics of poverty, attitude and culture. This paper promises to highlight issues and factors which account in part for the noticeable decline in active civil society activism and its implication for virile representative governance. It will underscores the point that except for pockets of elitist outbursts, the near absence of organized platform for sustained mass action against unpopular policies and unhealthy practices by political actors vis-à-vis budding resentment undermine rather than advance the cause of representative governance.