TITLE:
Examining Civil Society Organizations’ Collaboration Paradox in Confronting Electoral Challenges in Enugu State, Nigeria, 1999-2020
AUTHORS:
Tobechukwu Chukwudifu Leo-Nnoli, Makodi Biereenu-Nnabugwu
KEYWORDS:
Motley, Collaboration Operational Collaboration, Paradoxical Collaboration, Democratization, Civil Society Organization, Electoral Challenges, Para-Politics, Post-Colonial State Theory, Structual-Functionalism, Political Economy, Non-Governmental Organizations
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.11 No.3,
July
23,
2021
ABSTRACT: Researches
critical of electoral freedom and fairness, integrity, financing, and security
in Nigeria have challenged Nigeria’s democratization process. However, not many
of them have captured these challenges considering the paradox of the civil
society organizations’ collaborations (CSOs) in Nigeria. We argued that for
civil society to activate the democratization process, a historically
structured imbalance through dualism of political and economic collaborations
of the civil society should be resolved. The study made use of the Exploratory
Research Design, using the Structural-Functional Analysis and the Post-Colonial
State theory as frameworks for analyzing the imperativeness of economic
collaborations to direct the political collaborations. It made use of mixed
method of data collection and analysis, using a sample of 312 respondents drawn
from population of 1434 members of civil society organizations. We used the
Multilinear Regression model in the Statistical Packages for the Social
Sciences IBM (SPSS) version 20 to test the statistical hypothesis that: civil
society organizations’ uncordial relations with government organizations and
their uncordial relations with business organizations are significantly related
to their detection of electoral challenges in Enugu State, 1999- 2020. It
was found that civil society organizations’ uncordial relationship with
government organizations rather than uncordial relationship with business
organizations is significantly related to help in detecting electoral
challenges in Enugu State, 1999-2020.