Alhaji Lekan Busari is the General Manager of the Oyo State Community and Social Development Agency, a World Bank assisted programme for the reduction of rural poverty in the state. In this interview with Sulaimon Olanrewaju, he speaks of how the activities of the agency are reducing poverty in the state. Excerpt:WHAT kinds of projects do you assist the communities to implement'They are basically social service projects; projects that can provide social service to poor people. They are services that majority of the people can benefit from and claim ownership of as opposed to projects that only individuals or a few people could benefit from. Such projects include health centres, schools, water projects, drainages, community markets, electricity and roads.What is the process of initiating a project'Whichever community is interested in participating in a project will signify its intention through the local government to the agency for assistance. There is no community that does not belong to a local government. This agency is basically to support communities, so any expression of interest for communities to participate in the project must be routed through their local governments. This is to ensure that after the completion of the facility, the local government will provide all the needed support to make sure that the structures are not just put in place but also the associated assistance to make those structures deliver the required services. For instance, if a health centre is put in place, that structure on its own cannot provide health services unless there is provision of drugs, medical personnel and other related equipment which we expect the local government to provide for the community. So, we only assist communities to moderate the way they come up with their plans and those plans would include all those projects they feel would address their needs in terms of social services. We only assist them to put it together. The issue of sustainability and maintenance is left with the community and the local government.What is the extent of the assistance you render to the communities'What we do for this kind of project to make it more sustainable is that we do not allow communities to come up with projects that are beyond their capability to maintain. The desire of this project is to make sure that no community comes up with a basket of projects that is more than N10million. If the cost is not more than N10million, the community will be able to contribute to show ownership. With this, we are sure that when they put the project in place they will be able to maintain and sustain it. So, it is required that each community must be able to provide at least 10 per cent of the contribution to make the total cost of the project.How do you source your funds' Do you rely totally on the state government or do you get the support of the federal government also'This is a project of the state government but the fund for running it is drawn from a credit from the World Bank. The Federal Government on behalf of about 25 states, of which Oyo State is one, obtained a credit from the World Bank for a period of five years between 2009 and 2013. The total loan obtained from the World Bank for all the participating states is about $200million. But with the involvement of the state government and the support of the local governments, the state government on a yearly basis is contributing N100million while with the sum total contribution of participating local governments; we are able to leverage more funds for the project. We are envisaging at the end of the project, a total leverage sum of $383 million including the $200million from the World Bank out of which Oyo State can draw $5million.You are midway into the project. What is your assessment of it'For now, it is moderately satisfactory because by the support we are getting from the local government, in relation with supporting their communities, is still very low. Most communities have completed their projects but the local governments are not fulfilling their promises to support the projects of their local communities. This is because of the frequent changes in the administration of the local governments.More so, the actual implementation of most of the projects started late last year, given the election that we had this year and changes in government at the state and local government levels, the instability at the local governments affected some of these local governments. But we are making frantic efforts to ensure that most of the completed projects have the support of the new administration at the local government level so that the necessary facilities that will make those projects useful to the communities are put in place.From your experience, what do you think are the major challenges of communities'They have serious challenges. One of the challenges of communities is in the area of coming up with their own 10 per cent contribution. Most communities are extremely poor but we still desire that for them to show ownership of the projects and to ensure that the projects are maintained; they must come up with their contribution. In order to assist them, we have resolved that this contribution can be in kind; labour, provision of materials such as block, cement and sand.One other challenge is in the area of documentation. Because most of them are poor and because they also elect their management committee at the community level most of whom are not too literate, they cannot document; especially procurement procedure. But some of these challenges are being addressed by the staff of the agency who go their regularly to monitor the process. We also give them training and ensure that all the financial and procurement guidelines are followed.Let's look at the projects the agency has executed since coming into existence.A lot of projects have been executed. Those that have been completed and put to use now are about 30 out of 67 that are ongoing. I want to put it on record that about 39 communities are currently implementing their development plans; each development plan contains between three and four projects. The communities are not operating at the same level. I am sure before the end of the first quarter of next year most of these projects would have been completed.How do you think we can tackle the problem of poverty at the community level'This is one of the approaches that could be used. We are making use of community-driven development approach where communities are put at the centre stage; they decide what their problems are, they prioritise them and come up with plans for us to assist them. Because of the participatory nature, they are also involved in the execution of the projects. Once they see those projects as addressing their needs, they will invariably address the poverty issues that arise from them.Some people are of the view that these projects just scratch the issue on the surface and don't really address the poverty challenges of the people.That is a very myopic way to look at it. This type of project is not designed to solve all poverty problems of the people. It first started in LEEMP as a demonstration project, to see how it would work if the people were given the resources to address their developmental challenges. The project has a time frame, limited resources, running on a credit from the World Bank and it is also being supplemented by the state government. Just imagine, all the funds available to this agency are not up to the allocation of a local government and all the projects we are executing are constitutional responsibilities of the local government. That is why we are appealing to the local governments to support the efforts of the state government to bring the people out of poverty. So, my charge to the local governments is to ensure that they embrace this concept by also replicating it in their local governments by incorporating the views and priority projects of the communities into their development plans.At the expiration of this project, what should be the expectation of the people of Oyo State'The fruit is that the outcome of this project is that more people will be able to have more access to good social and infrastructural services from the agency. That is the number of people attending school will increase, child and maternal mortality will reduce because of the increased access to health facilities, access to drinkable water will also increase and there will be a reduction of waterborne diseases. There will be good roads and drainages which will mean that rural people will be able to transport their farm produce to urban markets, there will also be improved electricity supply into the rural areas which will increase the entrepreneurial activities of the rural people. All these will improve the quality of lives of the rural people and once the quality of life of the people is improved the level of poverty will reduce.
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