CNPP, CLO Fault IMF Meeting With Civil Society Groups

Two Civil Society groups have faulted their exclusion from a meeting held by the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with stakeholders in Lagos.

The Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) and the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) said that the meeting would not achieve the desired result because “it failed to involve key stakeholders from the Civil Society Groups.”

The chairman of CLO in Lagos State, Mr. Ehi Omokhuale, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday that “the meeting ought to have encompassed all stakeholders to be meaningful.”

NAN reports that the Managing Director of IMF, Christine Lagarde, on Tuesday concluded her visit to Nigeria with a meeting with Civil Society Groups in Lagos.

The meeting was to enable the groups, as stakeholders, to provide insight to the growth and sustenance of the nation’s economy.

Omokhuale said that there was no justification for excluding the two major civil society groups in the state from the meeting.

“We expect that the IMF meeting, which was coming at a time when the nation was heading towards a major crisis, would have involved all stakeholders from the Civil Society,” he said.

Meanwhile, Omokhuale said that the CLO held a closed door meeting with the other civil society groups and resolved to stand by their decision to resist the planned removal of fuel subsidy.

“We will stop at nothing until our demands are met,” he said.

In a separate interview with NAN, the South-West Secretary of the CNPP, Mr. Austin Nnorom, said that the organisation had expected that the meeting with the IMF boss would involve everybody that represented an agitation for change in Nigeria.

He said that the exclusion of some groups from the meeting “watered down the value of the forum and the attendant seriousness with which Nigerians would have looked at it.

“If the organisers had involved all stakeholders, a convincing resolution would have been reached that would go a long way in helping to resolve the impending crisis in the nation,” he said.