The Special Adviser to the Governor on Community and Communications, Kehinde Bamigbetan spoke about the impact of community newspapers to the growth of the state and why the government will continue to partner with them in selling its programmes and policies. He also spoke about government’s strides in the promotion of community governance through the Community Development Associations which has witnessed phenomena growth in the last 30 months. He spoke with Adeyinka Aderibigbe.
How would you assess the level of community participation in governance compared to what you met on ground? How far have you been able to confront the issues met on ground head-on in addressing it?
We went on a tour of all the CDAs, during which we audited the relationship between the CDAs and CDCs and between the CDCs and the local governments. Through these tours, we were able to identify the areas of obstacles and engage the stakeholders so that by the time we finished, we had developed a stronger web among them.
There were instances, for example, where the CDAs and local governments were at loggerheads and we used that intervention to bring them together that they have to work together. There were CDAs for example, that had projects and they were expecting a matching grant from local government which they didn’t do, but because of our intervention, we were able to solve those things.
There are subventions that local governments were meant to give to CDAs, which many of them couldn’t secure until we started this intervention. Many of them now saw the need to start giving the CDAs subventions. In fact, some of them owed subventions running to two to three years and immediately some of them raised cheques and signed them out based on that intervention.
We have also started using the CDAs not just for policy formulation, but for execution. For example, when we were going to do the 114 roads, we met with all the CDAs and gave them a template on how to monitor the projects. For instance, the moment the contractors come to site, they were supposed to hold a meeting with the contractors who were supposed to give them a profile of the project which must include the value of the project, the duration, the various artisans needed in case such could be found within the community and how he feels the CDAs could assist him.
There were communities where landlords had to sacrifice their fences so that the road dimension can be achieved and we were able to do all these things and be able to put the 114 roads in place without any major clashes because wherever the contractors had issues, we came in to speak to the CDAs and the CDAs understood.
I would give an example, when we had issues with the dimension of the roads at Mazamaza, in Amuwo-Odofin, it was to the CDA that we turned. On that particular street, we found that most houses belonged to widows whose only means of subsistence was the yearly rent obtained on their property. Because their houses have already encroached into the road, narrowing it to seven metres, the residents became violent and prevented the work from commencing.
The real reason was because the contractor insisted he has been paid to construct a 9.5 metre road, and if he had to do that, several houses would be affected. The residents said they no longer wanted the road. We had to come in to find a mid way. We wouldn’t want the widows to lose their rents and the same time, we wanted to do the road. Using the CDA, we were able to negotiate with the residents and agreed to shift to 8 metres. These sort of things we were able to do across the state to achieve the 114 roads without creating skirmishes all over the place.
The CDA system even at the local government, you discover that they are under the supervisory councillor for Agric and you begin to wonder. Here you are doing something so beautiful, the system they are dealing with at the local level are directly under another different system, is that not courting clashes?
Answer: Well, that is one of the issues we are already dealing with. We however should not lose sight of the fact that the local governments have been very instrumental in nurturing CDAs. But over time too, CDAs have tended to over rely on local governments for financing and for support that is one of the challenges they are facing. We are trying to encourage CDAs not to put too much pressure on local governments but to rely on their own skills to try and improve themselves.
The CDA that came first, Convenant CDA in Ikorodu, were able to on their own without support from any local government purchase 500kva transformer, they built major roads in the community, 270 metres in all, with interlocking stones and concrete drains as well as slabs. They provided street lights and constructed a police posts, all on their own.
So that is the model now, you cannot complain that the local government is controlling you or over controlling or overbearing if you yourself don’t look inwards and try and do something for yourself. And the local government would now see you have more intrinsic value that you have tried to express and that is what we are trying to encourage. We also know that we have to also review the laws so as to increase the autonomy of the CDAs.
Some people are calling for the abolition of the L.G.As, saying they are no longer relevant. Do you agree to this?
I think it is the other way round. I think the idea is to encourage CDAs to push the local governments to perform better, I think that is the role we are trying to make them play. For example, in the case of 114 road projects, they were able to monitor many of those road projects and gave an independent report. And because they were monitoring, the local government staff became much more careful because they knew the CDAs had direct access to the governor to enable him know what is happening in those local governments. That helped a lot.
Accountability is another area, you know. Current law says the local governments are supposed to publish their accounts on notice boards at the local government secretariats. That means they need the CDAs and CDCs to be carried along to enable them ascertain how local governments funds are being used and we have tried in that area. And for me, the problem with our democracy right now is lack of popular participation.
Our people are being alienated from political process and the people who are benefiting are the politicians. When more people take interest in what is happening, the more we are going to get politicians who are more responsible. So I see it as a personal passion to energise the base and when you energise the base you will have productive politics. I see that our people are generally docile, they don’t want to bother about what is happening around them and unless we correct it, unless our people are ready to tell the chairman, you’ve collected N2million, for God’s sake what have you done with it?
If we are not asking those questions, we cannot blame the chairman for being the problems of the council. For me, it’s a divine opportunity being here, it is a silent crusade to empower the people, to ask the questions and luckily many of the people at CDAs are retired professionals, they don’t need freebies. They are even landlords who have built their houses, so they are not people who would be looking for chairmen to give them money and so they should be able to speak the truth, but government needs to encourage them to do so.