Advocacy Town Hall in Agura

The first in our series of town hall meetings took place last Saturday in Agura in Ikorodu, which was also a research site during the fact finding survey in April this year. Agura is a small settlement in what appeared to be the very end of Ikorodu town. The meeting took place in the school field of the Methodist Primary School. The initially sparse turnout swelled as the drama sketch, the first activity on the agenda, unfolded. Members of the Agura Community Development Association, leaders of Market Women’s Associations, were present as well as members of the community. The twenty minute sketch which was to provide ‘edutainment’ on local government issues to the crowd created a lot of interest and hopefully drove home a lot of points we wanted to make on budgeting, the role of local government and councillors and the duty of the public to participate. After the sketch sessions on these topics were conducted reinforcing the points made in the sketch and then we opened the floor for comments and questions. Members of the community were invited to share their concerns or issues which were common to the community and on which we could provide support in raising with the local government. A number of issues were raised including the poor drainage, no power (although we did mention that this is not a constitutional role of local governments) and limited access to potable water. All of which was very helpful as we plan to continue to work with community based organizations in the long term, especially the Community Development Associations to engage effectively with local government.
The next destination on the town hall route is Oredo, Edo State.

- Lanre.

OST Press Release Sept '09

‘MAKING LOCAL GOVERNANCE WORK’- Advocacy Campaign
As part of its Making Local Governance Work project, OST will be embarking on an advocacy campaign in September which will involve town hall meetings in various communities in some of the states previously visited during the survey. These town hall meetings are aimed at creating awareness on local governance issues including the functions of local government, local councillors, and the rights of citizens to participate in governance. The town hall meetings will also educate the public on ways to get involved in the budgeting process of their local government areas and also on the need to pay taxes to the government as a means of securing development. The meetings are a step towards galvanizing the public to demand a better government.

Face off in Adiyan

So the residents of Adiyan Local Government in Ogun State are taking the local government authorities there to task (see The Sunday Guardian of 13 September). Members of the community have complained about the poor state of roads in their area despite their own efforts to undertake manual repairs to the road with shovels and hoes. The Community Development Association (CDA) has added its voice to these complaints and has decided to stop implementing community projects until the local government authorities take their responsibility to work in the community seriously. CDAs were originally established to implement community projects with the support of the local government, not to supplant the role of the local government administration. I’ve often thought that having CDAs simply burns the candle at both ends, if people pay their rates and dues to the local authorities, have councillors to represent their interests within the council, why should they be the sole funders of development projects? It’s a bit of double jeopardy and means that the public has to take on the additional role of administering local government despite having elected representatives. In this situation it seems that the CDA fully recognizes its role as an institution of support and not one which replaces the local government. Let’s see who will blink first.

- Lanre