ABSTRACT:

Globally and over the years, the civil society has been recognized as a major actor in state governance given its prominent roles in agitating for and actually promoting good governance. This is more particularly so in developing nations with low democratic culture, weak governance institutions and feeble opposition politics. In the specific context of Nigeria, the civil society has, no doubt, been involved in promoting good governance since the nation’s independence in 1960. Given, however that the level of good governance has continued to remain very low and for which there exists myriad of social, economic and political problems that ultimately result in mass poverty among the citizens and general underdevelopment of the nation, there is the increasing need for the functionality of the civil society in Nigeria to be strengthened. It is in this circumstance that the paper has, as its core specific objectives, to discuss the vital roles of the civil society in promoting good governance, to identify major impediments to the functionality of the civil society in Nigeria and to recommend measures to strengthen the capacity of the civil society to play more effective and sustainable roles in promoting good governance. The research methodology entailed essentially gathering information and data from secondary sources notably textbooks, journals, institutional publications etc. Consequently, content analysis technique was adopted in the analysis. The basic finding is that insufficient fund and government crack down constitute the
major impediments to the functionality of the civil society in Nigeria. The basic recommendation is that the civil society needs to be financially self sustaining in order to gain and sustain its independence from government and to be able to carry out its numerous activities.