THE Citizen Report Card is the name given to a study conducted by a non-governmental organisation called The Niger Delta Professionals for Development with support from the European Union and the National Planning Commission. According to media reports, the study has shown that no fewer than 287 projects have been abandoned in 120 oil producing communities in six states in the Niger Delta region.ALL the tiers of government and private companies are implicated in this daunting crisis of failure to improve the living conditions of the people in this geopolitical zone as the detailed analysis has revealed that 34 per cent of the projects were abandoned by the Federal Government, 42 per cent by the state governments, 11 per cent by the local governments, eight per cent by the oil companies and six per cent by the international agencies.IT may be simplistic to blame these depressing data entirely on corruption. While corruption may have its own share of the blame, there are other critical considerations as revealed by the study conducted by the Niger Delta Professionals for Development. For instance, the study showed that there was little planning or coordination between those who executed the projects and those who were in charge of the facilities. This lack of coordination may be the reason why many of the infrastructure have not been functional.IN Imo State, for example, a fish pond was never connected to any water source and 76 per cent of communities surveyed in Abia State have some health facilities but less than one third have drugs or medical equipment. The study also claims that only eight per cent of the health facilities have a doctor who works at least one day in a week while in some communities, there is modern equipment but no one knows how to run them. In others, there are doctors but no drugs or equipment.APART from this, it is also generally believed from experience that infrastructure has failed in Niger Delta because of the belligerent and hostile attitude of the people who prefer to take money instead of having the facilities built and established in the area. Those people have been known to harass and chase contractors from sites and they had, in many instances, prevented donor agencies from working in their local environment.YET there is a need to improve the living conditions of these people to repudiate the stigma of deliberate neglect or marginalisation which critics are fond of as justification for lack of peace in the region. The Citizen Report Card has shown, however, the validity of the dominant thesis in development studies that development cannot be taken to any place without involving the people from the primary level of identifying the facility needed by them to the final level of functionality of these critical infrastructure.IT has also demonstrated that for infrastructure to be functional, there is a need for coordination between those who execute the projects and those who are in charge of the established facilities so that expensive projects will not in the end lie waste. There is, therefore, a need for synergy amongst the tiers of government, private companies and donor agencies to stop the waste in the Niger Delta and make the established projects work in improving the life of the people of the Niger Delta region.THE Citizen Report Card should not just gather dust. It must be studied and corrections of the anomalies revealed must be done immediately.
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