Abuja – Global Rights, an international human rights capacity-building Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), on Tuesday called on the National Assembly to stop consideration of NGO Regulatory Bill to save the country.

The Country Director of the NGO, Ms Abiodun Bayewu-Teru, told newsmen in Abuja that the National Assembly was currently considering the enactment of an Act to provide for the Establishment of NGO Regulatory Commission.
Bayewu-Teru said that the bill which would supervise, coordinate and monitor NGOs and CSOs had gone through first and second readings and was presently at the committee phase at the House of Representatives.

She said that the bill sought to create a commission with a board which would license NGOs biennially before they could operate, adding that the associations were expected to disclose their sources of funding.

“The challenges with the proposed law are that all issues contained in the Bill are already regulated by existing law.

“A key issue that the Bill seeks to introduce is a new form of registration where the Board will have powers to license all NGOs.

“Without the license of the Board, no NGO can operate; this is proposed by the Bill, notwithstanding extant laws regulating all aspects of the operations of voluntary organisations.

“The registration of organisations in Nigeria is regulated by the Companies and Allied Matters Act 1990 (CAMA) and registration is with the Corporate Affairs Commission, Abuja, Nigeria,’’ she said.

Bayewu-Teru said that as framed, the current bill had the potential to harm Nigeria’s fragile economy in a significant way, especially with its description of donor funds.

She said that it described “foreign financial contribution,” which was the central theme as any financial donations or transfer made by any foreign source.

According to her, this is broad enough to include every conceivable external fund except those involving the government of Nigeria and the government of any foreign country.

“Therefore, we can include remittances from the diaspora into Nigeria and transfers by voluntary organizations such as Rotary International.

“This Bill has the potential to harm our economy in the way that we have described and the consequences are too dire to contemplate.’’

Bayewu-Teru said that the potential hurt was however not restricted to funds from Nigerians in diaspora, adding that it also extended to development support provided by international voluntary associations.

She said that the Bill would “governmentalise’’ NGOs in Nigeria and suffocate them with “exponential bureaucratisation at a time when official government policy is to ease transaction costs for small entities’’.

She added that the bill which was a “boom’’ to official corruption would militarise the civic space, making it impossible for anyone who harboured views different from the government to organise with legal protection around those views.

The country director said that the bill interfered with constitutionally protected rights to freedoms of expression, association and assembly in a profoundly partisan and impermissible manner.

She said the bill in essence, created bottlenecks with already existing bureaucracy, adding that the monumental expenses a new institution would incur was not a burden tax payers should be further subjected to.

Bayewu-Teru said that it also defeated the ease of doing business and created uncertainty for donors and development partners.

She said that in view of the enumerated drawbacks and in the interest of a just, equitable and open society, it was clear that the Bill should not be passed.

She said that rather, governing institutions needed to work with stakeholders to agree on how best to ensure they all worked to improve the lives of Nigerians within the framework of already existing laws.