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Nigeria, often given as an example of bad governance, is frequently categorized as one of the world’s most corrupt and violent States. Another exceptional characteristic, for an African country, is that very few NGOs from the industrialized countries are present. Nigeria practically does not depend on public development aid, thanks to the financial and political power guaranteed by its oil resources. This element sets Nigeria apart from the rest of the continent and falls even further outside the standardizing prescriptions of promoters of “good governance”. The local NGOs nevertheless play an important role, drawing on a civil society long shown to be full of vitality. The article takes concrete examples to examine how they generated and developed in a historical perspective, from Independence to the present day. The Authors also study the intrinsic fragility of the sphere of such associations which, under pressure from political powers, prove not be in line with the western ethos of good governance, even if it means playing down the hopes placed in civil society with regard to democratisation.