FG Executes 5,464 Community Development Projects

The Federal Government has executed a total of 5,464 community micro-projects in about 26 states of the country in the last five years.

There are also about 567 other community development plans awaiting implementation.

The projects, which are estimated to have gulped $380m, are classified under the Federal Project Support Unit of the Federal Ministry of Finance.

The National Coordinator, FPSU, Mr. Chudi Onuoha, who gave the figure in a statement made available to our correspondent in Abuja on Sunday, said the unit was established to coordinate the implementation of community and social development projects in the country, after the government had expressed concern with the challenges of poverty and success stories of past interventions.

He said the projects were aimed at sustainably increasing access of poor people to improved social and natural resources and infrastructure services.

Onuoha said, “The intervention was premised on the major elements of Vision 2020 and in line with the transformation agenda of the present government. As you know, the transformation agenda recognises the need for an enduring mechanism at the grass roots level for the empowerment of youth, women, the aged, children and other vulnerable groups in efforts to fight poverty.

“A total of 1,701 micro projects are still ongoing under the component 3 of the intervention and 1,413 projects are already completed and in use under interventions made in the educational sector.”

A breakdown of the figure shows that 1,998 projects were completed in the water sector; 1,015 in the health sector; 805 in transport sector; 649 in rural electrification sub-sector; 869 under socio-economic sector and 426 under environment sector.

Onuoha, however, expressed sadness over the non-commitment by the local government councils to the provision of complementary services to the completed micro projects.

Other challenges, according to him, are the inability of some states to pay statutory contributions for the projects; inability to attend to numerous communities as a result of inadequate fund as well as the fact that the intervention was closing by December this year.

According to him, the participating states only made a total of N5.8bn contribution in five years as of April this year, as against the expected N13bn.

He said, “To entrench community-driven development for service delivery, there is a need to consider the formulation of a national community-driven development policy, institutionalisation of mechanism for community-driven development approach at state and local government levels for community development and reformation of local governments to adopt the community-driven development policy as vehicle for community development.