One Community VOICE For Improved Standard Of Living
In Nigeria rural communities face several challenges, and one of those challenges is access to clean and potable water. According to the world bank, “In 2018, Nigeria’s Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) sector were declared to be in a state of emergency by the Government. In 2019, a combination of inadequate infrastructure, a lack of required human capital, poor investment, and a deficient enabling regulatory environment – amongst other challenges – meant that approximately 60 million Nigerians were living without access to basic drinking water”.
For a long time, Mr Bala, a resident of Buzunkure local government, Kuje area council, Abuja, lacked access to basic infrastructure in his community.
“We have to go to the river far away to fetch water and for some of us who have little money, we pay people who have boreholes in nearby estates to get water every day. This has caused a lot of suffering for us, every day you see children going to fetch water” Mr Bala’s
Lack of water, good roads, electricity, and standard healthcare facilities, to name a few, have affected his and his community members’ well-being. This has resulted in a lower standard of living, an increase in crime rates and out-of-school children, as well as poor hygiene and sanitation in their homes.
Mr. Bala at the community town hall
For years, the people of Buzunkure had to get water from a stream 45 minutes away because their only borehole had been damaged. This meant that their living conditions were deplorable and required immediate intervention.
Old Abandoned community borehole
The public and private Development Centre with support from VOICE sort to address this challenge with our ongoing project Promoting Inclusive Governance through Civic Engagement (PIGCE). The main purpose of our project is to empower rightsholders with the required skills, knowledge, and access to engage with their representatives and demand improved service delivery.
Community engagement and town hall in Buzunkure
To that end, we launched a series of advocacies. We visited the community to speak with the community head, youth and women leaders, and community members. We held a town hall meeting where they identified some of their basic needs. During this town hall, they highlighted the lack of water, good roads, security, and school classrooms and healthcare facilities among other things. We also noticed a huge communication gap between members of the community and their representatives. Most of them didn’t know the right channels to lay complaints, and they also lacked adequate procurement information on projects that have been approved and awarded for construction.
The town hall meeting allowed us to educate residents and develop their skills in engaging their representatives and using the upcoming general elections to ensure that the community’s needs are met. We trained those who were computer literate on how to use the Budeshi open contracting platform to stay up to date on contracting information, while we provided the rest of the community with our Budeshi toll-free number to enable them to reach us for project updates and contact information. The Budeshi platform gives users access to procurement data such as budget amounts, contract amounts, contractor details, project location, etc. from over 90 Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) in Nigeria at the federal level.
Following our training, we organized courtesy visits and advocacies alongside members of the community to their representatives. This was a significant outcome of the sensitization. Members of the community wrote letters to their representatives outlining their urgent needs as well as the importance of addressing them. Additionally, PPDC provided them with a radio platform to share more details about their needs and the urgency for intervention. The radio appearance allowed our listeners to learn how to better engage with their representative to achieve their desired outcome of an improved standard of living.
After our advocacy, the people of Buzunkure finally received good news in December 2021: a borehole was built in the heart of their community, eliminating the daunting task of traveling a long distance to get water. Though there are still several challenges that require immediate attention, our intervention campaigns, in collaboration with rightsholders, have enabled us to provide clean water in Buzunkure today.
The Newly constructed borehole
At PPDC, we believe that increasing citizen participation in governance is the only way to improve service delivery. This project demonstrates that when citizens band together to demand better, changes occur in their immediate community. Your voice is the only thing stopping you from a better life. Demanding accountability and transparency from our representatives are critical to improving Nigeria’s standard of living.