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A Kwara-based Civil Society Organization (CSO), Elites Network for Sustainable Development (ENetSuD) on Sunday presented the Needs Assessment report for various communities across the 193 political Wards in the State.
Speaking, the coordinator of ENetsud, Dr Abdullateef Alagbonsi said the organisation assessed the needs of 2,764 communities across the three senatorial districts of the state.
“Sometimes in 2020 we felt that what EnetSud has been doing was to track public fund spending under our follow Kwara Money activity, we felt that it was only communities that government remember, that have a project in their communities.
“For instance, if you have water, you have electricity, if you have a road that EnetSud is tracking in your community, it means the government has remembered that you are existing that is why they have brought the project to you.
“We now felt that we should not only be tracking the budget of places where the government has executed projects, we should also look at investigating communities, where the government did not even remember that they were existing. That was why we design the citizen enlightenment and mobilisation programme to identify the needs of communities that have been forgotten or that have been marginalised or abandoned by the government,” he said.
Alagbonsi highlighted the objectives of the CSO to include assessing the needs of communities in all the 193 wards of the state, training of community associations, as well as the volunteers for EnetSud on how government is spending money and promoting good governance.
“One of the problems we have identified was that there was no data on developmental needs to assess, identify and document the problems of Kwara communities.
“Major problems we identified include: lack of drinkable water. Many communities have no electricity, lack of healthcare service; some communities do not have a primary school, some no secondary school, poor environmental sanitation, lack of support for farmers in rural communities and poor road network for farmers to transport farm produce to market,” Alagbonsi noted.
The ENetSud coordinator, Dr Alagbonsi, explained that the communities needs assessment programme which came under the Citizens Enlightenment and Mobilisation Program (CEMP) was sponsored by Gobir Foundation, with sum of N26.5 million.
He remarked “we have assessed and documented the problems of every community, and the comprehensive report will be made available to the public in a week’s time at no cost because our partner, Gobir foundation has paid for the service”.
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