History and Contribution

Our History and Contribution To Change
Since 2007, LACSOP has adopted a series of strategic plans, most designed around establishing voice and accountability for Lagos State citizens.

Milestones from 2007
You Sef Na Gofment.
Our first strategy sought a deepened democracy where real issues from citizens’ feedback is translated to data and utilized to inform development priorities. Awareness creation was the basis of this strategy. LACSOP’s intention was improve civic awareness and address apathy to governance and ultimately, prepare voices to demand for service delivery.

Evidence to Policy
From 2010-2012, LACSOP engaged in a Citizens Impact Assessment Campaign that undertook to generate data as evidence of the impact on governance. In this regard, LACSOP conducted a series of research studies that assessed impact in core pro-poor sectors of health, education and environment. The outcome of these studies were applied towards establishing relationships with MDAs with a view to negotiating better service delivery. The outcome was the early seeds of collaboration was sowed between citizens groups and the Lagos State Government.

Opening up the legislature to voices
Our journey with budgets and government fiscal policy opened up new engagements with the Lagos State House of Assembly. In this regard, we actively engaged with major Committees in the legislature making recommendations for engagement, community needs, budget analysis and elections. LACSOP has carried out constituency assessments, citizen-legislature parleys and larger townhall meetings and a accomplished to a degree, a consciousness and input of citizens needs into legislative processes.

Step into the budget process
LACSOP became a first institution to engage with government budgets from conception stage in Lagos State. Our strategy, cutting through 2012 to 2019, has persisted in scrutinizing fiscal policies in core development sectors to make visible budget impacts on government bodies themselves and to create a link to appropriation or misappropriation to citizens lives.

Laws, gender and inclusion
One of the outcomes of our legislative parleys was a partnership with new citizen groups such as persons with disability and leading gender groups. an outcome of the new relationships was the passage of the Lagos State Special Peoples (“Special Peoples’) Law 2011 and the following as a case study, the report measures to what extent persons with disability (PWDs) can access public services and facilities such as those relating to health, education, public roads and facilities (including banks), employment, housing and recreation, in Lagos State as at August 2012 – one year after the passage of the Law.

Recognize citizens networks
This strategy brings unusual partners to the development table and flows from a LACSOP 2015 Commitment. In that year, LACSOP established Citizens Networks Capacity Strengthening for Policy Participation (CINCAPP) made up of 20 artisan groups with over a combined 10,000 membership base to meet the drive for transparency, accountability and more meaningful citizens’ participation in governance. The core focus is to integrate the needs of different CSO typologies for projection in decision making. Having these groups participate in feedback to the government will give credibility to the data collected and will amplify voices.

Courting technology: A new gateway for citizens
LACSOP established a partnership with arrowheads of government’s feedback mechanism such as the Public Advice Centre (PAC), the Office of Transformation, Creativity and Innovation (OTCI) as well as the Office of Civic Engagement. This ongoing partnership seeks to help redirect data received from platforms such as the Citizens Gateway to impact development.

 

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