CLEEN Foundation

CLEEN Foundation (formerly known as Centre for Law Enforcement Education) is a non profit organization established in January 1998 with headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria. The mission of the organisation at inception was to promote respect for human rights and cooperation between civil society and law enforcement agencies in the lawful discharge of their duties in Nigeria. However, in response to growing public concern for safety and security in Nigeria and as part of the activities marking its fifth anniversary in December 2003, the name of the organization was changed to CLEEN Foundation and the mandate expanded to include promotion of public safety, security and accessible justice through empirical research, legislative advocacy, demonstration programmes and publications in partnership with government, business and civil society.

The mission of the organisation is pursued through three integrated programmes areas:

• Accountability and Justice programme which focuses on improving institutional capacity of internal and external processes and mechanisms for making justice sector institutions such as the police, responsive and accountable to the people as well as improving the treatment of vulnerable groups such as women and children within the criminal justice system.
• Public safety and security programme, which facilitates cooperation and partnership between the police in Nigeria and their host communities in the joint identification of community problems and finding solutions to them before they develop into major crime problems as well as ensuring that community initiatives on crime prevention and control respect dues process safe guards of criminal suspects.
• Research and planning programme, which provides empirical data on public safety and security issues in Nigeria such as crime levels, fear of crime, public perception of criminal justice institutions as well as reports on demonstration programmes embarked upon by CLEEN in an environment where reliable quantitative data are difficult to come by policy makers on almost all public issues.

ICT has been central to the modest success recorded by CLEEN Foundation in pursuit of its mandate in Nigeria. This is because it provides wider dissemination opportunities for our activites and publications in a timely and efficient way, which has radically reduced our printing and dissemination costs. The major ICT tool we have found very useful has been the Internet through e-mail and website. We use e-mail and our website to create public awareness about our activities and for dissemination of our publications.

For instance, whenever we have a new publication, we usually publish the electronic versions first on our website before they are printed in hard copies. We will follow up the web publishing with a newsblast issued through e-mail to target audiences. The newsblast carries summaries of the publications as well as directions on how to get the electronic versions on our website and how to order for hard copies. Through this process, information about the publication gets to wider audience, which in turn increases the visitor traffic on our website.

Lately, we have introduced another ICT tool in our work. This is the creative use of SMS on GSM cell phones for public campaigns against anti-people policies by government and for boycott of products that are sub standard or produced by companies that engage in publicly reprehensible activities. One that comes to mind is a recent SMS we participated in disseminating, which condemns president Obasanjo’s current efforts to amend the Nigerian constitution in order to enable him have a third term in office like Museveni in Uganda. The content of the text reads:

“Thirty years ago Obasanjo visited our school and told us that we are the leaders of tomorrow. Thirty years later he said he is still our leader. He has used our parent’s quota thirty years ago. He is using our quota now. Finally he wants to use our children’s quota. Say no to third term. Support the rule of law and democratic principles in Nigeria.”

The major barriers we have in our use of ICT are the high cost of acquiring broadband internet services and the high rate with which ICT companies, especially ISPs, close shops in Nigeria. This means that apart from looking for money to pay for the start up costs, which includes equipment, you also have to deal with the fact that the company may not survive its first anniversary. Our advice borne out of experience is to be very careful and meticulous in deciding which company to patronize. It may require consulting experts in the sector before making a decision. Kabissa support in making this decision and its wide array of ICT support services have been invaluable to us.

CLEEN Foundation has been a Kabissa member since 2000.