INNOCENT CHUKWUMA, Regional Representative of Ford Foundation in West Africa, in this interview with Assistant Life Editor, TERH AGBEDEH, looks at the work of the foundation, particularly its governance and human rights programme as well as its youth and media programmes…
Ford’s agenda for Nigeria
Innocent ChukwumaWe actually have three initiative areas in Nigeria that we work in. The key one is the governance and human rights programme. Our governance programme takes about 30 to 35 per cent of our annual budget. And we work in three broad areas of governance. The key one is political governance, ensuring that the processes through which our leaders are elected are transparent, accountable and credible. Under that rubric, we support the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). We also support the civil society groups involved in basic education, all ensuring that there is a co-relation between the vote cast and the outcome of the election, which, in some situations, is not often the case.
The second leg of the programme is economic governance. Again, we come from a region that is resource-rich. In fact, every other day, if you read the papers, new mineral resources are being discovered, almost double the economic growth in the region. If you look at the lot of the people who inhabit that region, you ask yourself, what are these resources being used for? What we have found through the work we do is that illicit financial outflow is a major case. The resources generated from the exploitation of mineral resources end up in few hands and are often taken abroad. So, ensuring that there is transparency within the extractive industry, that people who work in this industry are held accountable, that the opacity that has pervaded the industry is reduced, is a key way of freeing resources that can then be used to address areas of most need.
The third leg is security governance, especially the governance for security intervention in conflict situations. Security intervention is supposed to reduce or bring to normalcy conflict; but in certain situations, as we have seen in our recent history, it actually contributes in exacerbating the situation because the governance process – whether it is rules of engagement of making sure that troops, when they are deployed, work within the frameworks that are respectful of rights and responsibilities of the people – has been a challenge. So we work with various partners to rein this in. That is on the governance part.
The second initiative is our youth programme, again driven by the fact that West Africa is a youthful population depending on the statistics that you use. You hear figures that between 50 to 70 per cent of our population are made up of people who are under 30. And then you ask yourself, to what extent is this category of our population involved in the life of the country, both with their energy and the opportunities the country has. In other parts of the world, they have ageing population and they are envying us. But people are totally alienated from the governance process. So our youth programmes, in which we work with the most vulnerable ones, especially females, is about empowering the youths through integrated process, so that they can be mainstreamed in the society.
The third one is the media programme – advancing public service media, making sure that the content the media produce has social justice issues, so that the daily struggles of our people are mainstreamed in the media.
Allegation of hidden agenda
The hidden agenda, if there is any, is that we want to see the world a better place for all of us. The individuals that founded the Foundation were struck that amid growth in the economy and the improvements in the lot of the people, you still have majority of the people in this part of the world still living below poverty level; still cannot take for granted the things that those who are affluent take for granted. The fact that you can have three square meals; that you can express yourself without looking over your shoulders about who is watching you; that the human potentials that are enormous are given the sort of environment for them to flourish, so that each one of us will have an opportunity to be the best that we can, pursue our life dream in the environment free of intimidation; is driving it and it is a charity. It may be a concept that in modern Nigerian society, the whole context of giving is something that you could say is just beginning to thrive. But in other parts of the world, it has been there. A place like America is built on volunteerism and people have global vision that as long as there are parts of the world where people are still in want, nobody can say they are safe on a sustainable basis. So there is really no hidden agenda because the works we do are defined by our partners. We don’t get directly involved; we just give financial and technical support.
Our budget on an annual basis for West Africa is about $13 million, and about 50 to 70 per cent of that money is spent in Nigeria because the theory of change is that if you get Nigeria right, the rest of the region will follow suit. Also, if you look at the population of Nigeria in relation to the region, and the contribution of Nigeria to the West African Gross Domestic Product (GDP), at the last count, is about 67 per cent.
Challenges of the job
We are very conscious of the fact that compared to the gamut of the problem or the challenge that you observe in the region, what we are giving is like a drop in the ocean, and we often find ourselves punching above our weight. So, that has informed the decisions we make in terms of the kind of partners we select to work with us. It has also made us move in quite a conscious way to ensure that we are coordinated with other role players, other foundations, other donor agencies within the region, because it is only within the coordinated framework that the feasibility of the work that we do can be seen; that the impact of the work may be noticed; that the scalability is possible because the key thing for all is that all these brilliant ideas and plans that our partners have, which of them stands a best chance of being felt to an extent that they will impact to the maximum? Who are the stakeholders that are being brought on board that have the capacity to take the work to the next level or ensure that the work has multiplier effect? When you ask those questions in making your decision, you find out that you cannot avoid working with government; you cannot avoid working with leading groups in the society; you cannot avoid networking with other donors, bilateral, multilateral private foundations that are available. So we involve in various networks, coordinating groups around the different issues that we work with.