Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that effective policing of democratic regimes, beyond the checks and balances of constitutional provisions, demands civil society advocacy and effective coalition of pressure groups, through revolutionary volunteering.

Paper long abstract:

Fourteen years into a renascent democratic rule in Nigeria, and the state of governance seems to have gravitated to perceived levels of socio-economic and political decadence, thereby calling for a more ingenious and more global alternative. This paper argues that effective policing of democratic regimes, beyond the checks and balances of constitutional provisions, demands extraneous devices such as civil society advocacy and effective coalition of pressure groups. Beyond positioning itself as a routine onlooker or passive action in the governance system, civil society advocacy entails revolutionary volunteerism, which is a resolve to entrench the people's power by all means. To this end, the paper attempts an existentialist inquiry of the state of activism carried out by civil society groups. It revisits the existentialist notions of Fear and Commitment in its inquest into the declining state of civil society advocacy in Nigeria. While it identifies Fear, in the existentialist sense, as the primary reason for the poor state of activism witnessed among civil society organizations, it proposes the notion of Commitment as a cardinal feature of revolutionary volunteerism. It argues that if effective policing is to take place in the present graft-prone democratic dispensation in Nigeria, these two notions bordering on existentiality have to be considered by key players and aspirants of civil society advocacy.

Key words: advocacy, volunteerism, Fear, commitment