Stakeholders Urge Govt to Align Development Initiatives with Community Priorities

By Praise Chinecherem

Participants at a town hall meeting organized by Connected Development in Awka, Anambra State, have appealed to government at all levels to derive its priorities from the needs of the various communities instead of asking the communities to align their with government priorities.

The meeting organized as part of ProjectTrust, supported by MacArthur Foundation, drew participants from relevant government agencies, presidents- general, community women leaders, youths and members of Anambra State Children’s Parliament.

Speaking on the occasion, ProjectTrust State Support Officer, Ujunwa Ananwude, who took participants through the goal and objectives of ProjectTrust as well as activities leading to he town hall meeting, explained that the focused on three thematic areas including education, health and WASH.

“After our inauguration, we trained MDAs officials and communities people before we went into some communities to ascertain the status of some awarded projects. We found that contractors and MDAs in some cases failed in their duties. We also observed that our schools are still largely inaccessible for persons with disability like those on wheelchairs or crutches.

“In one of the schools where they are supposed to execute a fence project worth 30 million naira, 15 million naira was paid to the contractor but the project was not implemented. The school principal lamented how she was forced to take some school property to her house while teachers cannot stay longer in school.

“Based on our findings, we wrote FOI letters to the affected federal institutions to seek their explanations and ultimately ensure that they come back to start or complete the projects. We encourage everyone, demand accountability from your representatives. Hold them accountability for the offices they occupy,” Ananwude charged them.
“You can also make use of the NomTrac tool developmed by CODE to nominate priority projects in your community and track same. We can use the information provided by community people to ask necessary questions to the contractor,” she added.

Comrade Ugochukwu Okeke, the Chairman, Joint Association of Persons with Disability, JONAPWD, explained the provisions of the State Disability Rights Law, urging all stakeholders to help in ending all forms of discrimination harmful treatment against persons with disability, PWDs.

“The law also stipulates the duties of government to persons with disability. Its section 23 stipulates that public buildings must be made accessible to PWDs. So, as a stakeholder, anywhere you witness any violation, please be our eyes and mouth piece”.

The Executive Director, Civil Rights Concern, Okey Onyeka, encouraged the people to ensure that govenrment works for them, insisting that the communities cannot leave everything to the government.

He urged communities to do more than developing charters of demands to also track and monitor the projects being executed by government to ensure that they follow specifications.

The representative of Anambra West in the Children’s Parliament, Silvia Chinwuba, wants govenrment to pay attention to the sufferings of people in flood prone communities who from year to year are compelled to pay certain amounts of money to repair or replace school items destroyed by flooding.

In their separate remarks, Ikechukwu Oforkansi, who is the National Vice President of Anambra State Association of Town Unions, ASATU, and the woman leader of Ozubulu, Clara Ndupu, stressed the need for the government to make their transactions transparent, especially when disbursing project funds for execution.
According to them, people cannot track or monitor projects in their communities when they do not know when the funds were disbursed.

Another participant and lecturer at the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University Igbariam, Dr Kenechukwu Makudo, stressed the need for the community stakeholders to be fully integrated in the execution of the projects contained in their demands to ensure that they provide input when things begin to go wrong.