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DOI 10.1007/s11266-016-9722-3
ORIGINAL PAPER
Civil Society Efficacy, Citizenship and Empowerment
in Africa
Emmanuel Remi Aiyede1
 International Society for Third-Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University 2016
Abstract This paper contributes to the debate on the limited efficacy of civil
society in Africa. It examines the complex interface between notions of civil society
and citizenship within the context of the postcolonial state in Africa. It argues that
the bifurcated character of citizenship is implicated in the inefficacy of civil society.
This is underlined by the limited achievements in social citizenship, aggravated by
the economic crisis and neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 1990s as well as the
politics of regime sustenance. Political disengagement, drain on the moral content of
public life and diminished collective orientation of citizens, aggravated conflicts
within society, thereby, promoting a democratisation of disempowerment and a
disorganised civil society.
Résumé Cet article contribue au débat sur l’efficacité de la société civile en
Afrique. Il se penche sur l’interface complexe qui existe entre les notions de société
civile et de citoyenneté dans le contexte de l’État postcolonial africain. Il soutient
que le caractère bifurqué de la citoyenneté, entre indigène et colon, joue un rôle
dans l’inefficacité de la société civile. La citoyenneté n’est pas caractérisée par une
conscience d’égalité et d’appartenance collective à une communauté politique au
dessein unificateur. Cela est souligné par les réalisations limitées observées dans le
domaine de la citoyenneté sociale et aggravé par les crises économiques et les
réformes néolibérales des années 80 et 90, ainsi que par les politiques de subsistance
de régime. Le désengagement politique, le faible contenu moral de la vie publique et
l’effritement de la confiance sociale des citoyens aggravent les conflits au sein de la
société, démocratisant ainsi la perte d’autonomie et désorganisant la société civile.
& Emmanuel Remi Aiyede
eaiyede@yahoo.com
1 Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan, Ibadan 100005, Oyo State, Nigeria
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Zusammenfassung Diese Abhandlung leistet einen Beitrag zur Debatte über die
Effizienz der Bürgergesellschaft in Afrika. Sie untersucht die komplexe Verbindung
zwischen den Konzepten Bürgergesellschaft und Bürgerschaft im Kontext des
postkolonialen Afrikas. Es wird behauptet, dass der zwischen den indigenen Ein-
wohnern und den Siedlern gespaltene Bürgerschaftscharakter mit der Ineffizienz der
Bürgergesellschaft in Verbindung steht. Die Bürgerschaft ist nicht durch ein
Bewusstsein über Gleichheit und kollektive Zugehörigkeit zu einer politischen
Gemeinschaft mit einem vereinenden Zweck gekennzeichnet. Hervorgehoben wird
dies von den begrenzten Erfolgen in der sozialen Bürgerschaft, zu denen
erschwerend die Wirtschaftkrise und die neoliberalen Reformen der achtziger und
neunziger Jahre sowie die Politik zum Erhalt des Regimes hinzukommen. Politi-
sches Disengagement, schwacher moralischer Inhalt im öffentlichen Leben und ein
aufgebrauchtes soziales Vertrauen der Bürger verschärften die Konflikte innerhalb
der Gesellschaft, wodurch die Entmachtung demokratisiert und die Bürgergesell-
schaft desorganisiert wurden.
Resumen El presente documento contribuye al debate sobre la eficacia de la
sociedad civil en África. Examina la compleja interfaz entre nociones de sociedad
civil y ciudadanı́a dentro del contexto del estado poscolonial en África. Argumenta
que el carácter bifurcado de la ciudadanı́a, entre indı́gena y colonizador, está
implicado en la ineficacia de la sociedad civil. La ciudadanı́a no se caracteriza por
una conciencia de igualdad y pertenencia colectiva a una comunidad polı́tica con un
propósito unificador. Esto queda subrayado por los limitados logros en ciudadanı́a
social, agravados por la crisis económica y las reformas neoliberales de los años
1980 y 1990, ası́ como también por la polı́tica de sostenimiento del régimen. La
falta de compromiso polı́tico, el bajo contenido moral de la vida pública y la sangrı́a
en la confianza entre ciudadanos, han agravado los conflictos dentro de la sociedad,
democratizando, de este modo, el desempoderamiento y desorganizando la sociedad
civil.
Keywords Civil society  Social citizenship  Neoliberal reforms  Indigene vs
settler  Empowerment  Africa
Introduction
After several decades of preoccupation with civil society as the major force that
propels a country in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, and in the move
towards democratic consolidation, experience has demonstrated the limitations of
civil society. At first it was Fareed Zakaria (1997) that announced that many new
democracies have had elections without cultivating liberal values. Soon, there were
cases of democratic reversals and of relapse into dictatorships. Then a series of
classificatory schemes across a spectrum between consolidated democracies and
persistent dictatorships emerged as scholars endeavoured to make sense of the
phenomena that came out of the third wave of democratisation.
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In general, while the spread of democracy worldwide has been celebrated there
have been concerns about the character of the regimes that lay claim to being
democratic. Indeed, Ake (1992) argued that the popularity of democracy has been
accompanied by a devaluation of democracy. At the heart of the democratic élan
was the proliferation of elections, the singular expression of the arrival of
democracy. There was a debate about the sufficiency or insufficiency of elections
for determining the democratic character of regimes. Given the importance of
elections, attention was paid to the worrisome character of elections in new
democracies and how to guarantee the integrity of elections. For it is obvious that
where elections have been riddled with irregularities and malpractices, as it is often
the case in several African countries, democratic stability is undermined.
Elections became both the pre-occupation of scholars and activists. Election
monitoring and observations have become an industry of sorts while efforts are
currently invested in studying electoral malpractices and how to check them.
Indeed, scholars had focused on the conditions and institutional means of
ensuring and securing the integrity of elections. There is yet no robust
understanding of how to make citizens and their associations help ensure the
integrity of elections, especially in inauspicious situations for democratic
stability, such as conditions of widespread illiteracy, poverty and inequality,
where there is no middle class large or strong enough to demand voice and
participate in decision making processes.
These challenges have brought renewed preoccupation with the character of
contemporary citizenship and civil society and their limitations in extending the
democratic space and sustaining the vitality of democracy and achieving and
sustaining accountable and responsive government. The relationship between the
character of contemporary citizenship and its implications for governance (Stoker
et al. 2011), and the character of associational life, and the way citizens form and
use associations (Skocpol 2003) have become important issues for the contem-
porary world. The African experience makes the issues more pungent. There has
been a long debate about the failure of civil society to live up to expectation. In
recent times, the threat of sterility of the debate on the character of civil society
in Africa has led to a preoccupation with empirical investigations of what is
going on with civil society in Africa (see Obadare 2013; Edwards 2011).
In this essay, I seek to contribute to the debate on the complex problem of
achieving democratic stability and vitality by examining the relationship between
civil society and citizenship within the framework of empowerment. The
argument being proposed is that the character of citizenship is implicated in the
efficacy of civil society in Africa, drawing on the Nigerian case. Secondly, it
shows that the character of neoliberal reforms, which had deepened inequality
and eroded the moral basis of social life, had complicated the problem of
unsettled and bifurcated citizenship. Rolling back the state arrested the
development of social citizenship in Nigeria. Thirdly, it argues that to strengthen
the electoral process as a decision making process by means of civil society, the
problematic character of contemporary citizenship should not only be addressed,
citizens have to be empowered to strengthen their efficacy and achieve the
elements of civil society that conduce to democratic stability and a strong state.
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Civil Society and the State
The democratic struggles that characterised the African continent in the 1990s
represent an important moment in the evolution of the postcolonial state. The
significance of the event is not that it reflects the strains and stresses that
accompanied the fiscal crisis of the state, it is rather because it unearthed the
contradictions of state-society relations that underlay the fragility of the postcolonial
authoritarian state. Given the prominence of professional associations, labour
unions, human rights activists, churches and various associations in the unveiling of
the contradictions in state-society relations, intellectual engagement with the
developments have focused on civil society, a concept that has evolved from the
European experience. The emphasis is that citizens press their challenge to
autocracy not merely as individuals but as members of an organisation or
association. In its more recent application to the democratisation and development
processes, it is often linked to the concept of the public sphere and social capital
(Edwards 2004).
Within the European context, the concept has undergone several mutations from
Hegel to Rousseau and de Tocqueville before it was applied to Africa in the mid-
80s. Civil society has been viewed as high society—the ruling groups concerned
with the interests of king and country, as undesirable organisational forms that
obstructs the relationship between state and citizen, and as a foil against the
totalitarian tendencies of the state and thereby a guarantor of individual freedom.
But its application to Africa has been drawn from Tocqueville’s theory. Here, civil
society is conceived as the catalyst of democratisation, pushing it to consolidation
and sustaining it (Diamond 1994, 1997; Bratton 1994; Chazan 1994; Woods 1992).
According to Chazan (1996:282), the nurturing of civil society is widely
perceived as the most effective means of controlling repeated abuses of state power,
holding rulers accountable to their citizens and establishing the foundations for
durable democratic government. Diamond (1994) defines the role of civil society as
that of ‘‘containing the power of democratic governments, checking their potential
for abuse and violation of the law, and subjecting them to public scrutiny’’. He
believes that civil society organisations supplement political parties as schools for
leadership training and fostering the development of democratic culture. Citizens
learn political advocacy and contestation from participating in such organisations.
As avenues for interest aggregation and representation, they serve to mitigate
political conflicts (ibid., 7).
The theory of social capital also underscores the importance of civil society to the
democratisation process. According to Putnam (1993:90), ‘‘participation in civic
organisations inculcates skills of cooperation as well as a sense of shared
responsibility for collective endeavours. Moreover, when individuals belong to
‘‘cross-cutting’’ groups with diverse goals and members, their attitudes will tend to
moderate as a result of group interaction and cross pressures’’. Thus, ‘‘a dense
network of voluntary associations and citizens’ organisations help to sustain civil
society and community relations in a way that generates trust and cooperation
between citizens and a high level of civic engagement and participation…creates
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conditions for integration and participation’’. Civil society as ‘discursive public
sphere’ enables citizens to talk about common concerns in conditions of freedom,
equality and non-violent interaction (Edwards 2004).
Thus, the revival and vibrancy of associational life generated a lot of optimism
about the democratic possibilities in countries of sub-Saharan Africa as elsewhere in
the world in the 1990s. But with the simmering momentum of democratisation and
the sobering outcomes of political reforms in several countries, efforts have been
made to explain how and why civil society may contribute or fail to contribute to
democratic consolidation and stability in Africa and elsewhere.
Encarnacion (2000:13) has challenged the notion that civil society could serve as
the engine of the democratic transformation of formerly authoritarian and
totalitarian societies. For him, the idea that strong civil society is a requirement
for democratic deepening is empirically flawed. He argues that it is improper to
apply a Tocquevillian interpretation that is clearly American in character to
developments in most democratising countries. The concept is lifted and applied
without contemplating its compatibility with the socio-economic context of most of
these transiting countries to which the term is applied. He maintained that in the
context of ‘‘undeveloped political systems overburdened newly democratic
governments and highly politicised populations’’ a vibrant civil society might
supersede the ability of the government to respond to social demand and thus lead to
‘‘a crisis of governability and democracy’’.
Drawing on contrasting experiences from Brazil and Spain and alluding to
other countries in the process of democratisation, he argues that the vibrancy of
civil society has not been linked to widespread support for democracy. The
proliferation of civil society organisations may in fact be inimical to democratic
deepening. In some instances civil society organisations have become alternatives
to strong political institutions (political parties) atomising society, dispersing
political power and thereby complicating democratic consolidation (Encarnacion
2000).
Studies of several contexts show that civil society may in fact harbour
contradictory impulse as a heterogeneous category. It is an arena of conflict between
organised interests of various kinds, political disputes among different political
projects, and its constituents depend on ‘‘political entrepreneurs’’, social leaders, or
outside allies to represent them or depend on firms, donors and international
organisations as sources of funds. These have implications for representation,
accountability and the ability of the various groups in civil society to unite in a
broad front, which might be critical to propelling democratic change. The
construction of democracy involves a complicated processes of state and civil
society collaboration, requiring an analyses of the construction of citizenship, re-
evaluation of citizenship and subjectivity, state fragmentation, and the position
occupied by social actors especially within the context of neoliberal economic
reforms (Haque 2008; Aiyede 2005; Bhandari 2006; Avritzer 2008).
The debate over the role of civil society in promoting democracy has been also
followed by questions about its role in generating social capital. Social capital is
often used as networks that cut across traditional cleavages and which promote trust
and reciprocity that nourish wider cooperation, law abidingness and commitment to
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the larger political community (Putnam 1993). In the words of Coleman (1990:304),
social capital is ‘‘embodied in the relations among persons… a group whose
members manifest trustworthiness, and place extensive trust in one another will be
able to accomplish more than a comparable group lacking that trustworthiness and
trust’’. Social capital includes norms of reciprocity and trust available as resources
to individuals who interact within a particular group. In this sense, civil society
organisation whether, neighbourhood organisations, occupational groups, choral
meetings, football clubs, human rights organisations or an ethnic group, or religious
communities, by their functioning are capable of generating trust and cooperation
which are useful for achieving collective goals.
Civil society needs to simultaneously sustain intimate solidarity within groups as
well as sustain connections to the larger political community, to increase the reserve
of positive social capital. Fukuyama (1999) talks about the significance of the
‘‘radius of trust and Putnam follows Granovetter (1985) in emphasising ‘‘weak’’ ties
as against ‘‘strong’’ ties as formative of social capital. Indeed, Woolcock (1998)
argues that social capital requires that a balance be struck between ‘‘embeddedness’’
and ‘‘autonomy’’.
The very assumptions on which the effects of associational life and social capital
are based have also been questioned on empirical grounds. Newton (2001) argues
that social trust and political trust are not closely associated; both are not strongly
associated with membership of voluntary associations in survey research. For him,
the relationship between social trust and civil society exist at the system level but in
a complicated and indirect manner. The effectiveness of social and political
institutions mediates the relationship between individual social trust and political
trust. Social and political capital relates to the aggregate properties of societies and
polities, not to their individual members. Some scholars have explained the different
outcomes associated with civil society and democracy promotion in terms of the
political and cultural constraints or pre-existing ethnic and religious cleavages
(Sundstrom 2006; Belloni 2008). Jamal (2012) emphasise the inclusivity of political
settlement in terms of the extent of participation of major political groups and the
degree of societal support.
In an important work on the condition of American democracy, Skocpol
(2003:128) argues that democracy has diminished as result of changes in
associational life in America. According to her, civic America has transitioned
from membership activities to professionally manage institutions and advocacy
groups, reflecting adversely on the vitality and prosperity of democracy in America.
She therefore argues that while scholars have focused on individual behaviours, and
patterns of voter turnout, it is indeed important to study changes in organised public
activities and strategic civic leadership. Specifically it is important to study the ways
Americans create and use associations (p. 128). Furthermore, she noted that from
the 1960s to 1970s massive social movements bypassed federated membership
associations and set the stage for the proliferation of new kinds of professionally run
civic undertakings (p. 128), diminished the quality of democracy in America as
result of the decline of civic involvement by citizens.
Taking the argument forward, Stoker et al. (2011), states that the problem is with
our notion of citizenship and how three forces have changed it. The first of these is
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globalisation, which has challenged the effective sovereignty of nation states,
accompanied by a loss of faith in the capacity of the state to guarantee social and
economic well being for citizens, and eroding confidence in representative
democracy. The second is regionalisation, which has framed the context of
citizenship beyond the nation state. The debate on citizenship ‘‘now leaks beyond
national boundaries’’. The third is that there are ambiguities and contradictions in
our experience of the state. The state is no longer able to deliver citizenship in a
manner that is considered fair to all. There is a loss of ‘‘faith in the capacity of the
state to support our citizenship or of citizens to exercise control over the state’’. This
is seen in growing inequalities, the perceived ascendance of special interests that
have captured the state and the curtailment of freedoms as a result of the fight
against terrorism and consequent distrust of public institutions.
There are two traditional conceptions of citizens: the republican and liberal
perceptions of membership of a political community with the enjoyment of rights
and assumption of duties. The republican model emphasise civic self-rule, active
participation in processes of deliberation and decision-making that ensures
individuals are citizens, not subjects but political agents. The liberal model
emphasise citizen being protected by the law rather than participating in its
formulation or execution, a legal status rather than a fact of everyday life. But
citizens exercise these freedoms primarily in the world of private associations and
attachments, rather than in the political domain. These views that combined to
constitute the notion of citizenship in western countries were later expanded by the
work of Marshall (1950) in which the social dimension of citizens became the
catalyst for the welfare state. Thus, to be a citizen of a democracy ‘‘meant having
access to basic legal rights, political entitlements to vote and make your voice
heard, and social rights to basic features of a welfare state’’. Stoker et al. (2011)
argue that this notion of citizenship has come to grief. Thus, citizenship is the
variable that is implicated in the concern about the deterioration in civic activism,
and the limits of civil society.
The foregoing discourse shows very clearly the importance of the social
foundation of state legitimacy on civil society, thereby rendering citizenship
fundamental to civil society. Secondly, it shows that civil society activities change
in response to developments within state and society. But most theorising of civil
society assumes that citizenship is not problematic. This is not the case for
postcolonial states, especially in Africa. Although the issue of citizenship is widely
recognised in the literature on political instability and conflict in Africa, the way this
problem relates to civil society has not been given sufficient attention. The next
section argues that this failure accounts for the claim of the uniqueness of civil
society in Africa. Further, studies on the participatory deficits in democracies
around the world, especially the effects of globalisation and civil society
professionalisation on citizenship in advanced democracies and experiences from
non-western nations provide fresh insights that can explain the situation in Africa
and the need for addressing citizenship and empowerment.
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The Case for the Uniqueness of Civil Society in Africa
In the preceding section I have provided a broad outline of the trend of the global
debate on the role of civil society in democracy and development. The essence is to
show the global intellectual context under which the specific African discourse
should be examined. Second it shows that certain conjectural factors including
ideology and character of capitalism impinge on civil society. This is important
because of the tendency to attribute exceptionalism to the African situation or to
assert, as Osaghae (2006) puts it, the ‘‘uniqueness of civil society in Africa’’.
To begin, it must be noted that the usefulness of the Tocquevillian approach to
actual realities in Africa has been questioned. Kasfir (1998) noted rightly that some
of the organisations that have been very crucial to the democratisation process in
Africa do not seem to possess the ‘civic/civil’ character that supposedly
differentiates civil society organisations from other organisations in society. He
argues further that the importance of new civil society organisations to the
democratisation project has been exaggerated, and that the conventional view
idealises the western practices from which elements of civil society are borrowed.
He sees these problems as tied to the prescriptive nature of the definition such that it
precludes most of the organisations that have been crucial to the democratic
transition process. He therefore calls for the widening of the universe of
organisations that can potentially contribute to democracy while recognising the
challenges that it poses for state’s effectiveness and capacity to listen, balance and
respond to issues. This argument assumes that the western experience is not a
subject of debate. It is indeed a subject of contention from the ideological viewpoint
and sometimes beyond it.
For Chabal and Daloz (1999), to talk of the existence of civil society in Africa is
misnomer because the state in Africa is poorly institutionalised, and weakly
autonomous from society. Both state and civil society are integrated in vertical,
infra-institutional and patrimonial networks that underpin politics. Social relations
is conducted on personalised bonds of mutual beneficial reciprocity while civil
society involves the establishment of social networks distinct from the state and
capable of transcending primordial family, kin or even communal ties. Only when
there is a strong and differentiated state will a counter-hegemonic civil society
emerge (Chabal and Daloz 1999:19). Bayart et al. (1999) go further to describe the
ways kinship relations have been appropriated to construct a network of criminal
activities to take advantage of globalisation and liberalisation as the ‘‘maturation of
social capital’’ of the felonious or deceptive state.
On the contrary, Ekeh (1992) argues that if civil society is historicised and
contextualised in the light of African experience, using Nigeria as an example, it
will immediately be obvious that there is a remarkable number and vitality of free
institutions and associations that operate outside state control and that have in
several instances posed challenges to the state dating back to the colonial times. The
problem with civil society has to do with the social and political space occupied by
civil society. According to him, Africa’s political spaces are segmented. The is
because of the bifurcation of the public realm as distinct from those of the European
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nations where a single public realm effectively offer common platforms for the
activities of the state and the public behaviour of individuals. In Africa, this
segmentation of public realm limits the potential of civil society as an agent of
reform. This segmentation has its origin in colonialism. Drawing on an earlier
formulation of this dilemma in relation to the crisis of the state in Africa (Ekeh
1975), he explains that the forces of the colonial state alienated the individual and
led to the emergence of two public domains: the primordial public domain, which is
the domain of modern social formations associated with ancient structures of
Kinship, and the civic public domain, which is the political space within which the
formal state operates. Individuals are attached and committed to the primordial
public domain against the civic public realm, while the civic realm is illegitimate.
Morality holds sway in the primordial public realm, but the civic public realm is
amoral. Civil society activities straddle these domains. Thus, the contradictory pulls
of the two domains account for the conflictual character of civil society. For
Osaghae (2006:244), the ethnicisation of civil society marks the ‘‘uniqueness’’ of
Africa’s civil society and Ekeh’s theory of the two publics, expressing the
dialectical bifurcation of the public domain provides an explanation for the
ineffectiveness of civil society in Africa.
Ekeh (1992) further advances a classification of the vast number of associations
on the basis of the context from which they operate; the ends they seek to advance
and the sources and means they apply in their operations. Emphasising the primacy
of the primordial public sphere, he argues that most associations operating in this
domain are unable to foster democratic reform because they are not oriented
towards common notions of liberty. Based on kinship, they are unable to transcend
ethnic boundaries and crystallise generalised conceptions of the human person and
individual liberty. The associations in the civic public domain, such as labour
unions, professional associations and human rights groups who may have
contributed to individual liberty are weak, though the most exposed. He therefore
calls for policies that would reconcile these two public domains, identifying
‘‘federal character’’ or affirmative action as one of such policies.
The weakness of this perspective becomes obvious when it is applied to
citizenship. In relations to citizenship, Ekeh (1994:236) contrasts the evolution of
the relationship between public finance and citizenship responsibility in the West
with that in Africa. According to him, public finance in liberal democratic theory is
‘‘conceived and run as [an] aspect of the theory of citizenship and of the public
domain. Individuals pay taxes as part of their duties to the state from which they will
receive several benefits’’. But this does not apply in Africa, where the state is alien
and has not been owned by or embedded in society. Hence citizens find it hard to
pay taxes and perform duties to the state. What is more, the alien nature of the state
coupled with the bifurcated public realm make it legitimate in the eyes of the
African to divert resources and funds of the inclusive civic public for the use of the
more restricted primordial public by officials whose kinship origins are from smaller
enclaves. In other words, the dialectic of the colonial experience has generated a
morality that legitimises the use of civic public office and funds for the benefit of the
individual or his primordial group. Thus, public officers steal from the civic realm
but will not steal from the primordial realm, which remains the preserve of moral
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obligations. As I have argued elsewhere (Aiyede 2009), the major weakness of this
explanation of the colonial impact is that it fails to reckon with the human agency
and policy decisions that establish arrangements within which political interactions
occur, or with the evolution of values within society and how these values are
sustained or changed over time.
Indeed, it discountenances the moral essence of man and its agency in society.
Here we see a contrived moral dilemma when there is none. In the first place
individuals that have behaved morally in the primordial public and behave amorally
in the civic domain do not constitute the primordial public as moral and the civic
public as amoral. Otherwise, it will be equally logical to say that armed robbers,
who behave morally when at home with their families and behave amorally when in
the site of robbery operations, make the home the domain of morality and the site of
robbery the domain of amorality. What is in need of explanation is the inability of
the postcolonial leadership to humanise the postcolonial state and transform its
workings to serve broad welfare. It is this failure that partly provoked civil society
struggles of the 1980s and 1990s.
Furthermore, several arguments have been put forward to challenge the
assumptions that underlay the foundations of Ekeh’s theory of the two publics
(see Osaghae 2006:240). These include the following: bribery and corruption in the
civic public has little to do with constitutive primordial interests. If these were so,
virtually all hometowns of Nigeria’s billionaire current and former military and
civilian political leaders would have become model cities and towns. But this is not
the case; rather funds looted from public treasury have made their way to individual
accounts in foreign banks. Cases of corruption are not confined to state institutions
alone. They occur even in religions houses and are reported regularly in Nigerian
media. Besides, primordial identities are only one of the multiple identities that
individuals adopt, reflecting the heterogeneity of civil society. From this perspec-
tive, ethnic and hometown associations are not as strong or deterministic as Ekeh’s
theory assumes, nor is the implied view that development means ‘‘helping your
home town’’ empirically tenable. Indeed, ethnic associations not only perform the
function of shadow states, they act as urban-based support organisation for migrants,
providing security and avenues for ethno-linguistic identification (Okafor and
Honey 1998:12). As Osaghae’s (1998) study of Igbos and Yorubas in Kano shows,
such organisations are connected to their host government and traditional
institutions in a variety of ways. They embark on projects that support their host
government and on projects typical of conventional development non-governmental
organisations to enhance wellbeing in their places of residence. But Osaghae (2006),
does not consider these challenges strong enough to undermine the relevance and
timelessness of the theory of the two publics, because of the increased fragility of
the African state that followed the crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, witnessing the
entry of primordial associations as shadow states, providing security for those
exiting from the state and the civic public.
As it has been argued elsewhere (Aiyede 2009), drawing on Mamdani’s (2001)
alternative interpretation of the struggle for independence as a struggle of natives to
be recognised as having trans-ethnic identity, to gain admission to a world of rights,
and to civil society; it is citizenship that has been reconstituted and bifurcated to
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serve predation by the postcolonial leadership manifesting in the indigene/settler
dichotomy that confounds the notion of a universal citizenship that upholds equality
before the law. Citizenship in this universal sense does not stand in opposition to
pluralism, just as multiple identities does not detract from allegiance to the state.
Indeed, citizenship in its social dimension is an enhancer of social capital. In the
case of the postcolonial state in Africa, the effort at social citizens was never
achieved to a significant extent before the onset of the economic crisis of the 1980s.
The rolling back of the state under neoliberal programming then deepened
inequality such that, as Adejumobi (2001:156) has argued, ‘‘citizenship is more
nominal than substantive. Thus, ‘‘when citizenship rights and benefits are largely
denied and the state seems out of reach, pluralism may become subversive of or a
danger to the state’’.
The notion of indigene/settler, the bifurcated citizenship, has manifested in
several ways across the continent, perhaps providing explanation for the different
performance of civil society across the continent.
Neoliberal Reforms, Civil Society and Citizen (dis) Empowerment
The decolonization process in Africa carried the promise of development and the
improvement of welfare for individuals. State politics in the first two and half
decades after independence was defined by an ideology of development. The state
did not only control the commanding heights of the economy, it was portrayed as
the catalyst and mobiliser of the people, the source of empowerment of citizens.
Various countries adopted several strategies of development partly influenced by the
ideological preferences of the postcolonial political leadership and local realities in
the context of the cold war. Performance of states in Africa in this regard varied
across the countries. But as time wore on, the expected benefits of independence did
not materialise according to the expectations of many citizens. However, for the
elites, occupation of public office provided social and economic security by means
of access to the resources of the state. Thus, public office was coveted and
competition for public office became the major pre-occupation of the elites.
Development objectives were reduced to devices of neutralising or accommodating
fractions of the non-ruling elite in the service of regime sustenance by the political
leadership. For ordinary people, citizenship gradually lost its meaning and
concreteness as authoritarian politics assaulted political rights and economic
mismanagement and corruption made the expected benefits of citizens increasingly
an abstraction. Most African regimes became so alienated and so violently
repressive that their citizens began to see the state and its agents as enemies to be
evaded, cheated and defeated if possible, but never as partners. (Ake 1991:13). The
situation became worse from the mid-1980s when many states fell into deep
economic crisis.
The expected transition from colonial subjects to citizens was never achieved de
jure neither were the consequences mollified by the achievement of economic
prosperity. In fact, the consolidation of single parties, president-for-life, extensive
security establishments, widespread inequalities, and personal rule necessarily
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involved the denying of the peoples’ right to participate in the decision-making
process, and sometimes the suspension of the constitution which defined those
rights. Hence, Ayoade(1988) described the situation as that of ‘‘states without
citizens’’.
The effort to implement economic liberalisation and state retrenchment to
address the crisis was met with stiff resistance because they had severe
repercussions for well being of the population. But the political leadership had to
respond to the demands of its creditors. They had to yield to the prescriptions
exhortations of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) ‘‘to
plunge into and persevere in market reforms that were certain to make most people
worse off for sometime’’. (Przeworski 1992:45). These involved the withdrawal of
the state from the economy through cuts in subsidies on social services, across-the-
board privatisation and commercialisation of public enterprises. The adverse effects
these had on living conditions of labour, the urban and rural poor provoked the
upheavals that eventually engulfed many states. African leaders were urged to
become tougher with bureaucrats and social actors who are undermining public
policies, more discipline, more probes, more policing. (Bangura 1994:787). Such
prescriptions failed to appreciate that people who live and/or work under poor and
difficult conditions will sometimes struggle to improve their circumstances in ways
that defy established patterns and institutions. In the end, Africa’s economic
performance fell short of suggested expectations on the basis of market reforms.
Many African states lost significant capacity for service delivery and social
protection during this period. State legitimacy was eroded even as the struggle over
the shrinking resources of the state intensified. Ethnic and other division in society
deepened leading to the outbreaks of intergroup violence and civil wars in some
states and pressures for political liberalisation and democratisation in others. Civil
society organisations proliferated and many dictators were forced to conduct
multiparty elections (Osaghae 2007; Carmody 1998; Adekanye 1995; Gibbon et al.
1992). Some successfully retained power as elected civilian heads of state while
others were removed from office through the ballot box.
Two effects of neoliberal policies on the state and social conditions in Africa that
are very critical for citizenship and civil society in Africa require restating. The first
has to do with the promotion of the market as the most efficient allocator of
resources and demonization of the state as incapable of inducing the necessary
changes in institutions and cultural habits necessary to drive productivity. The
second is the idea that the responsibility of the state to cater for basic needs of
citizens is not a natural or essential responsibility of the state. The revolutionary
effects of these on state-society relations can only be appreciated when it is realised
that the opposite of this assumptions formed the basis for mobilising the populace
for independence. It marked a reversal of the evolving social citizenship that
African states wriggled to achieve with limited results in the immediate post-
independence period.
The situation in Africa was viewed beyond the question of the state failing in its
responsibilities. The state should not have been responsible for welfare in the first
place. This was a prescription for the abrogation of citizens’ right to public utilities
and welfare. What is more, the cost of health and educational services skyrocketed
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as the process of privatisation and commercialisation unfolded, restricting access to
these services by large portions of the population. Labour unions and professional
associations which strove to protect rights, improve working conditions of their
members were defined as obstacles to the functioning of the market (Adesina 1994;
Bangura 1994). They became not just opponents of market reforms but targets of
state repression. As these groups engage the state, individuals disengaged as the
state became more vicious.
Disengagement involved the ‘‘withdrawal from social power wherever it is
exercised without consent and against one’s best interest’’. It involves ‘‘an escape
from, or at least a mitigation of, unacceptable domination, largely without recourse
to violence, and often without the need for organising collective action. Those who
disengage do not have within their sights the change of the system or the overthrow
of the oppressors; rather they seek a readily available alleviation, or at least a means
of protest that is invisible enough to avoid the wrath of authorities’’ (Baker
1997:54). It is a withdrawal from the state, away from its channels as a hedge
against its instability and dwindling resources. Forms of disengagement include
moving away from the formal economy into the informal economy. Economic
activities turn to outlets outside the purview or control of the state. State laws,
ordinances, judicial processes and the judicial system lose their credibility and non-
compliance with laws becomes commonplace. Popular religion and a whole array of
popular art forms are also important outlets for disengagement. Traditional
structures of authority regain force as narrower bases of communal solidarity
(village, family, ethnic, religious or other) are reinvigorated leading to greater
fragmentation of sub-sectors. In some cases people leave the country in search of
greener pastures. The path of disengagement depends on the religion, ethnicity,
education or occupation of the people involved (Azarya 1988:7–8).
Just like engagement, disengagement taxes the entrepreneurial ability of
individuals with contradictory tendency towards group action. The moral fabric
of society comes under severe strains as individual survival strategies trump group
solidarity. The drive for income generation supports a new morality of exploiting
one’s own group members. In the words of Deb (2009:160), ‘‘the adoption of the
new economic rationality of pursuit of self-interest conflicts with traditional
community interest, which is eventually subjugated by the new forces of the
market’’. Thus, Claude Ake (1992) writes about the democratisation struggles as an
‘‘expression of the will to survive’’ rather than a conscious effort to open up the
political space for liberal democracy. This is because neoliberal reforms hit at the
very livelihood of citizens even as the state becomes more rampageous in its
oppressive character. Civil society in this context can hardly solidify as it becomes
vulnerable to the overarching character of the state as the dominant employer,
bearer of opportunities for upward social mobility, and manipulator (Agbaje 1990;
Aiyede 2003, 2005).
In addition, the diverse conceptions of civil society and the multiple roles of civil
society organisations offer opportunity for the state to appropriate or specify its own
conception of civil society, create or support civil society organisations, which it
then uses to achieve set objectives. Some members of civil society in Nigeria have
been handpicked as representatives of civil society to participate in activities to
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address the fallouts of controversial elections such as setting up of the Uwais
Commission after the muddled 2007 election or to address national issues as in the
2014 national dialogue set up by the Goodluck Jonathan government. In south
Africa, after 1994, thousands of civil society actors ‘‘moved out of the sector to
participate in parliament, the transformation of state structures and the private
sector, taking a great deal of institutional memory and experience with them’’
(CCSRM 2012:11). Politics in general variously ‘‘instrumentalises civil society
organisations as protagonists, victims and mediators’’ (Obadare 2004:5). Atibil
(2012) shows how the divergent conceptions of public good, the roles of civil
society and the state in the development process by the government and elements of
civil society in Ghana reflect in the relations between state and society.
All of these feed on a problematic citizenship in Africa. The origin of the
citizenship problem is located in the colonial practice of decentralised despotism, in
which peoples are categorised into native and non-natives. Tribe defines the native
whereas the non-native is a race. A single law, the civil law, governs all races.
Customary law governs the native and there are as many customary laws as there are
natives. This system of political control, which is essentially a divide and rule
strategy, institutionalises tribal discrimination and justified it as an inevitable con-
sequence of cultural identity (Mamdani 2001, 2012). The transition from the
colonial to the postcolonial state involved both a change of guard and a
reconfiguration of the colonial strategy of control by the dominant postcolonial
elite. In the postcolonial era, society has been dissolved into ethnicities and
sustained by a bifurcated citizenship of indigenes and settlers.1 This practice of
citizenship by fragmenting society into antagonistic settler and indigene in relation
to the political space, constructs citizenship as an instrument of protection and
exclusion. In that context,
the colonial ‘‘native’’ has mutated into a postcolonial ‘‘indigene’’, appropri-
ating the familiar surroundings of nativity as an instrument of both protection
and exclusion in a context in which the postcolonial state has failed to fulfil its
original promise or even most basic roles. This is underwritten by the dualism
between customary law and statutory law, including a myth of inimitable per-
sonal law…. the indigene-settler dichotomy is likely to render any idea of
equal citizenship unrealisable with deeply troubling consequences for political
stability and the realisation of human rights in Africa. (Odinkalu 2015:99)
The practice of citizenship in Africa, which is characterised by the compromise
between the jus soli and jus sanguinis approaches, complicated by the identification
with indigenous communities or ethnic groups (see Manby 2010), has to a large
1 An ‘indigene’ is a person tracing patrilocal ancestry through a particular area of the state. This could be
a local government, state, province or traditional political domain. A ‘non-indigene’ or settler is anyone
resident outside his or her area of patrilocal ancestry. In the case of Nigeria and several other states in
Africa such ‘settlers’ or non-indigenes may have lived in an area for a long period of time, even up to five
decades, speak the local language, they never become indigenous. Children who are born to such settlers
in the location of residency also remain settlers and are subject to a variety of discrimination. If non-
indigenes are interested in political or pubic office they have to return to their state or local government of
patrilogy.
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extent contributed to the disorganisation of civil society. The practices of citizenship
in many spaces is characterised by discrimination in terms of rights to contest for
political office, especially at the sub-national level, and access to and competition
for the resources of the state, including services, such as admission to higher
educational institutions. As many scholars have noted, discriminatory policies have
provoked or aggravate inter-communal tensions sometimes leading to violent
conflicts in which civil society groups may be implicated (Mamdani 2002;
Kraxberger 2005; Human Rights Watch 2006; Hultin 2013). One major implication
of the discriminatory practices of bifurcated citizenship is that it drains society of
trust, thereby reducing the levels of social capital. Civic organising across spaces
becomes a big challenge for civil society actors. In many countries the effort to
develop national civil society networks has not been effective. Such movements end
up with competing coordinating entities between and within networks for
membership, recognition and for taking credit, thereby dissipating energy and
resources.
In south Africa, the weakness of civil society is seen in the absence of an
effective national federated civic membership organisation able to interact with the
state in a manner that can lead to broad positive change. Unlike the United
Democratic Front (UDF) in the anti-apartheid struggle, the South African National
NGO Coalition (SANGOGO) which was formed in 1995 has had limited impact.
Although there are new social movements and pressure groups that emerge to
address specific issues and lapses of the state, South Africa is still in need of a strong
national, membership based coalition to engage in a unified manner with
government (CCSRM 2012). In Nigeria, the labour congresses remain the visible
national federated organisations with sufficient power to galvanise national action.
But the labour federations themselves are unable to sustain action for a meaningful
length of time, given their loss of membership under economic crisis, reliance on
the large mass of discontent informal sector workforce who work daily to eke out a
living and the vulnerability of leadership to co-optation and pressure by government
(Aiyede 2010).
In other words, there is a dearth of active citizens engaged in civic organising that
cut across the length and breadth of these states. A problematic citizenship, at once
dichotomous between indigenes and settlers, and eroded of its social content,
renders the evolution of large membership organisations difficult within civil
society. Largely dominated by professional non-governmental advocacy organisa-
tions, that are not multi-tiered national federations, civil society in many states have
not been able to develop effective federated membership associations of mobilised
voluntary citizens that connect and network citizens across the country.
To be sure, there is a lot to learn from studies of citizenship as status and as
practices carried out in multiple spaces in relation to governance and the
empowerment of marginalised groups (Prokhovik 1998; McEwan 2005; Kraxberger
2005). In these wise, the efficacy of civil society requires that citizens ‘‘must have
access to information around which to mobilize to claim rights, creating spaces of
involvement and building capacities for political engagement’’ (McEwan
2005:987). Citizens must be empowered for effective civic activism as a backbone
of civil society. Studies of democratisation have emphasised the role of a strong
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middle class in pushing for democracy and the need to reenergise citizens to
increase the vitality of democracy (see Norris 2002). The quality of citizenship
affects the capacity for agency of individual citizens and local groups to organise
and sustain collective action across space and time.
One of the most remarkable expressions of the power of citizens over
government in a democracy is the franchise, the power of the electorate, the
sovereign people to determine those who can exercise political power. Thus, the
capacity of the electorate to freely express their choice in and through elections is
central to realisation of a meaningful sense of citizenship.
However, it is rare in many African countries for elections to enjoy broad
acceptance of the populace. This is because of the malpractices, irregularities,
logistics challenges and other shenanigans that often accompany the conduct of
elections. In Nigeria, the outcome of elections is usually challenged and the process
questioned by opposition parties and citizens. Virtually all elections at the
gubernatorial and presidential levels have been challenged in court since 1999. In
some African states like Kenya and Zimbabwe the onset of elections is usually
characterised by trepidation owing to spectre of violence. Thus, there is a question
of whether citizens make effective choices when they vote. Claude Ake (1994) in a
very interesting examination of the elections in Nigeria, described the process as the
‘‘democratisation of disempowerment’’, a process where people vote without
choosing, because their choice is limited to a choice between two or more
oppressors. Adebanwi and Obadare (2010) described the situation as the abrogation
of the electorate.
This situation has to change for the health of democracy in Africa. It must be
recognised that democratic struggles are presently as much about citizenship and
quality of life issues as they are about restraining the state and securing civil and
political rights. There is therefore a need to empower citizens by reasserting the role
of the state in promoting social citizenship away from the neoliberal view that has
democratised disempowerment. Empowerment is about education for active
citizenship, learning about ‘who has power and about how power can be taken,
who is excluded and why and how this can be challenged’ (Mayo and Anastacio
1999:14–15). Andersen and Sim (2004) define empowerment as the process of
awareness and capacity building, which increases the participation and decision
making of citizens to a transformative action, which will change opportunity
structures in an inclusive and equalising direction. Thus, Tam (2007) proposed three
challenges to address the citizenship question in relation to empowerment:
recovering the progressive ethos of empowerment, re-orientating public institutions
towards empowerment and strengthening our civic infrastructure.
Conclusion
Popular struggles since the 1980s are a struggle to make citizenship meaningful and
concrete. This processes needs to be accelerated not only by individual agency, this
is certainly important given the role of strategic leadership, but more importantly at
the level of civil society organisational agency. Civil society must be involved in
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creating citizens who are engaged in several publics. The real problem for civil
society is not a bifurcated social space however construed but the existence of a
bifurcated citizenship, in a context of multiple publics. The bifurcated citizenship
divorces citizens’ obligations from duties. It creates representation without taxation
and taxation without representation fuelling suspicion and distrust, disorganising
civil society. The implications of the indigene/settler divide for citizenship has been
illustrated in a variety of contexts in the literature (see Mamdani 2001; Adejumobi
2001; Aiyede 2009). It undermines the moral fabric of the public sphere by making
the equality of citizens mute and thereby constituting the state system as unjust and
discriminatory. The resolution of the citizenship question by de-emphasising
ancestry and privileging residency is necessary to building state and civil society in
Africa. Such a reconstructed citizenship can rejuvenate the moral fabric of civil
society. It will be the basis for the emergence of mass society and facilitate the
solidification of civil society, in the de Tocquevillian sense, with cross cutting
networks, able to sustain action against state excesses and accumulate social capital
that will serve as a hedge against predatory rule.
In Nigeria, several organisations in civil society such as the Citizen’s forum for
Constitutional Reform have been pushing for the redefinition of sub-national
citizenship with an emphasis on residency rights (Kraxberger 2005:21). Its
achievement will be a major step in neutralising the frayed link among citizens at
the grassroots. It holds the potential of unleashing a sense of political community at
the sub-national level that can increase the stake with the postcolonial state and
enhance the membership of associations and their capacity to engage the state. In
addition, citizens’ capacity to make effective decision and participate in public life
must be built. This will require African governments to carry out programmes that
improve the quality of life of the poor and disempowered.
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