A bill to establish Donor Agencies Regulatory Commission passed Second Reading in the House of Representatives on January 26. The bill sponsored by Hon. Unyime Idem (PDP; Akwa Ibom) seeks to regulate international agencies\u2019 funding in order to promote transparency, curb money laundering and terrorism financing. According to Hon. Idem in his lead debate, the bill was prompted by lack of transparency and accountability with funds received from donor agencies. While some legislators expressed support for the bill, others opposed it. Some of the reasons canvassed include that over-regulation of donor agencies may constitute bureaucratic bottlenecks or scare them away, and concern over the fact that the bill claims that it has no financial implication on Nigeria. Yet, it requires government allocation of funds to the Commission and receipt of donor agencies (agencies that the Commission is supposed to be regulating). The bill was however passed for Second Reading and referred to the House Committee on CSOs and Development Partners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\nhave been one too many attempts to regulate the non-profit sector in Nigeria.\nSeveral bills presented in this regard have been targeted at both non-profit\norganisations (NPOs) and donor agencies alike. These attempts have been\ncriticised by actors in the space as having the potential to stifle the\noperations of NPOs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many\nof such bills seek to duplicate already existing structures and functions since\nthere are at least 18 laws and regulations guiding the operations of NPOs in\nNigeria. For example, the Special Control Unit Against Money Laundering (SCUML)\nrequires NPOs to periodically declare funds received in their bank accounts. The\nMinistry of Finance, Budget and National Planning keeps record of grants that\nare brought into the country by foreign donor agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NPOs\nare initiatives of individuals whose operations are geared towards development\nin various aspects of the economy. To maximise donor funds, an enabling\nenvironment should be provided in order to aid compliance of NPOs, make them\nmore effective and deepen the impact of their operations. It is important to\nnote that some government parastatals, ministries and agencies are also recipients\nof donor funds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead\nof establishing more agencies to over-regulate donor agencies and NPOs, the\ngovernment should strengthen processes in already existing regulatory agencies.\nThe Legislature on its part should improve its oversight of such government\nagencies. This will aid transparency and proper assessment of aid effectiveness\nin Nigeria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As\nit is, most actors in the development field believe that the motivation for the\ncurrent bill is driven by legislators who seek to carve a role for themselves\nin the donor funding sector. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A bill to establish Donor Agencies Regulatory Commission passed Second Reading in the House of Representatives on January 26. The bill sponsored by Hon. Unyime Idem (PDP; Akwa Ibom) seeks to regulate international agencies\u2019 funding in order to promote transparency, curb money laundering and terrorism financing. According to Hon. Idem in his lead debate, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3092,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087\/revisions\/3092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}