Abstract

Civil society contribution to social and economic development has been acknowledged and documented in the literature. Ruefully, despite the disappointing results of development planning concentrated at the national federal level and imposed from the federal capitals of Nigeria from the gaining of political independence in 1960 to the 1990s and the decision at the dawning of the 21^stCentury that the rather “top down” approach towards development management was doomed to failure and deserved replacement. That compelled the initiation of the economic empowerment and development strategizing by Nigeria’s National Planning Commission as a better and more effective approach that should be adopted by all levels and entities that manage development activities (governments at the federal, 36 states, 774 local government areas and thousands of communities). Appropriate methods (case study and so forth) were used to analyse the operation of the CRSEEDS processes in the Cross River State since 2005 to the present. The findings are presented as follows. The government and its agencies or representatives have been reluctant to adopt participatory development management strategy involving engagement of (and partnership with) multiple stakeholders (civil society, faith organizations and private businesses) as recommended by development philosophers and practitioners including UN Agencies, conventions among others. While the State Planning Commission took about 17 months to develop the zero draft of the CRSEEDS-2, it gave civil society about seven days to make inputs into the plan. Additionally, it ignored previously submitted papers suggesting policy thrusts, targets and strategies submitted by a civil society network whose members had researched, analysed and reviewed the CRSEEDS-1 and provided information for improving CRSEEDS-2. The Cross River State government’s ignorance, downplaying and misunderstanding of the distinctive contributions, experience and potential of civil society in the State Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (CR-SEEDS-1 and the ongoing CR-SEEDS-2) has been compromising the output and outcome of development management in the state. Consequently, the CRSEEDS processes have been devoid of innovations in the application of environmentally (and climate) -friendly technologies and approaches (especially sustainable-renewable and efficient-energy and environmental governance) being advocated by the global development community. This obtains in the state despite the existence of civil society networking actively with reputable global organizations in various aspects of sustainable development. The implication of this exclusion of stakeholders for development policy is that the reversal of the habit of exclusion of civil society and stakeholders from the development process towards their inclusion in a good governance framework or process is urgent and imperative for optimizing the mobilization of human and natural resources from the region’s vast but poor grassroots communities under the participatory development management strategy that has led to the achievement of revolutionary changes in Brazil and surrounding countries.

Key words: Economic empowerment, development strategy, participation, stakeholders, state.