NOA urges communities to key into FG, development partners’ intervention

Dr Garba Abari, Director-General of National Orientation Agency, has called on communities across the country to take advantage of community driven interventions of the Federal Government and those of development partners in boosting infrastructure development.
Abari made the call in a statement after receiving the National Coordinator, Community and Social Development Project, Dr Abdulkareem Obaje, who was on a working visit to the agency.
According to Abari, the Federal Government and Development partners are doing a lot in the area of community development, adding that Nigerians should take advantage of such opportunities to better their lives.
He identified water as the greatest developmental need of communities worldwide.
He said: “Within the next decade, most wars in the world will be about water, owing to the dwindling availability of this natural resource and the exponential increase in human populations; Nigeria is not left out.
“From both economic and political perspectives, CSDP is bringing citizens inclusiveness, which is a globally accepted concept, in the management of public resources.
“I want to commend CSDP for alleviating the plights of poor rural as well as Internally Displaced People’s camps across the country by providing community driven water supply and other interventions.
“Do not relent in your interventions; we pledge our continuous and undiluted support.’’
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the CSDP is a World Bank, Federal and State Governments’ funded community development partnership.
According to Obaje, the CSDP has invested over 410 million dollars since 2009 in empowering communities to implement community driven micro projects.
The projects include bore holes, Community Health Centres, Rural Electrification Projects, Basic Education and Transportation.
Abari said: “So far, 11,000 micro projects have been executed nationwide through CSDP intervention in 33 states of the federation, with emphasis on human capital development of poor and vulnerable groups.
“It is under the supervision of the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Social Safety Nets; participatory democracy and transparency has been entrenched in the affected rural communities.
“However there is the need for State Assemblies to domesticate and create the agency in their states as stipulated in the partnership’s Memorandum of Understanding.”
The CSDP national coordinator called on NOA to assist the project by using the agency’s spread across the country to deepen advocacy for the Community Driven Development, a model of CSDP.
He added that it would go a long way to secure more states and community buy-in.