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.