IN less than eight days to the Presidential election in Nigeria, the Omudodu Youths Foundation, popularly known as OurMumuDonDo Movement led by ace musician, Charles Oputa a.k.a Charly Boy-Area Fada is to present before the public, the Nigerian Social Contract Initiative, loosely translated as NaWeBeGovernment.
This, according to the foundation, was a national reawakening social movement that is focused on mobilizing Nigerians, especially young men and women, to effectuate a social change in the country.
Addressing newsmen, on Friday in Abuja, Oputa (Charly Boy-Area Fada), said the presentation would gather representatives of international development organizations, civil society, representatives of the ruling and opposition parties, the media, opinion leaders across geopolitical regions and members of the public.
“The Nigeria Social Contract is designed as an agreement between the citizens and the elected officials. For the citizens, it will be a commitment to vote in both the national and sub-national elections, ensure that their votes are counted and count, and hold elected officials accountable to their campaign promises; while for the Government and those seeking election into offices, it will be a commitment to transparency and accountability in fulfilling campaign promises made to the citizens.
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“We are pleased to announce the official unveiling and presentation of the First Nigeria Social Contract document on Monday in Abuja.” He added.
Oputa said the movement was committed to enlisting youthful energy, values, and visions to advocate for a paradigm shift in Nigeria, by fundamentally believing and advocating for freedom, equality, and prosperity for the people of Nigeria.
According to him, the foundation believes that until the vast majority of Nigerians, especially the electorate and voting population are able to understand and reconstruct their engagement with the democratic process as the “real owners” of government and the Nigerian project, people’s participation and commitment to the electoral and political processes would continue to depreciate.
“This is an initiative of the Omudodu Youths Foundation aka OurMumuDonDo Movement, designed to enlighten the citizens about Nigeria’s democratic process and transfer the ownership of the democratic process to the citizens, thereby, enabling them to engender accountable democracy.
“As an organization advocating for social change, we believe that for there to be a stable and progressive society, there must be some established norms guiding the relationship between the people and the government of the state.
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“These established norms will define mutual obligations between the people and their leaders at the national and subnational levels of government. These mutual obligations will form the nucleus of the agreement that we call the Social Contract.
“It is in line with the 2019 general elections in Nigeria, that the Social Contract is being proposed as a model for reviewing and determining the commitment of politicians and political parties in the Nigerian polity. With this Social Contract initiative, we intend to improve citizens’ participation in the democratic process as well as increase the trust of the electorates in Nigeria’s electoral process.
“When we started the Nigerian Social Contract Initiative in June 2018, we realized that there was insufficient information on youth and citizens’ knowledge and engagement with the social contract as a tool for promoting good governance in Nigeria. This propelled us to conduct a survey to obtain baseline information about citizens’ knowledge of social contract and their level of engagement with government, using available spaces and legal frameworks, to demand accountability and good governance.
“Consequently, Our Movement, with support from the Ford Foundation and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) (Youth Alive Foundation) embarked on opinion surveys across the country using questionnaires and also through town hall engagement to gather information on the knowledge of the social contract among citizens.
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“The survey was conducted in four states in Nigeria namely; Abuja, Akwa Ibom, Lagos and Rivers States, involving a total of 1,866 respondents including youths, persons with disabilities, opinion moulders across the board, and others. However, the town halls were in Abuja and Lagos State. We shall be making public the findings of our survey on Monday, February 11, 2019.
“It is important to note that the informative findings from our research have reinforced our intention to prioritize building capacity and sensitizing the Nigerian citizens on advocacy techniques and other ways in which citizens can engage the government. Also, we believe, that these findings would bring a lot of relevance to the Nigerian Social Contract Initiative (NSCI) project.
“Before elections and the electoral process are concluded, it is important that the people are able to enter into a form of social contract with the political class who are always eager to govern them. This is the contract we need and not voter enslavement through vote buying.” Oputa explained.
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