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CLP Launches Community Development Plan for 8 Local Governments in Ekiti State

In Nigeria, a significant challenge we face is the failure of Local and State governments to conduct thorough needs assessments to identify the priority needs of communities for inclusion in their budgets. Instead, government representatives often allocate projects, such as empowerment initiatives, without clear accountability or community participation but based on demands of political loyalists, thereby primarily benefitting their party supporters. Additionally, they tend to execute projects that do not match the real needs of communities, such as citing a borehole in a community that already has reliable water sources but needs its health centre equipped with ultrasound machines, maternity beds, stethoscopes, weighing scales for newborns, and so on.

In a bid to solve this problem of wasting funds on projects that are not useful for the community, Community Life Project (CLP), in partnership with the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, trained Grassroots Community Leaders and Local Government Officers (Directors of Budget and Community Development) in December 2023 on inclusive budgeting and how to carry out participatory needs assessment.

Click on the PDFs below to read the full report