The 17 Mayors were recently in Umuahia, the Abia State capital inaugurated into office by the Abia State Governor, Dr. Alex Otti, to man the affairs of the 17 LGAs of the state. The Governor, who charged the 17 Mayors to make the local communities comfortable and conducive for accelerated development, also tasked them to play very decisive and active role in fishing out the hidden talents in the rural communities.
As the lead Entrepreneurship and Development Outfit, we are touched by the words of the Governor, and are therefore attracted by his charge to the 17 Mayors. We do this aware of need to give the governments’ efforts in this regard the push it deserves for the impact to be felt by the people, who are the major target and direct beneficiaries of our involvement: government and us.
We are encouraged in reiterating the fact that the charge by the Governor is a collective agenda, thus a position that Ndi-Abia at Home and in the Diaspora are comfortable with; and are expecting that soon deliberate efforts at carefully raising very reliable, dependable and workable structures necessary to ensuring that visible, transparent and accountable frameworks emerge, and in such a way and manner that sustainability of results and their impact are effectively accommodated at both the planning and execution of the Governor’s mandates to the Mayors.
We advise strongly that Monitoring and Evaluation should be considered an inevitable component of all the activities of the Mayors in the 17 LGAs. We lend our voice also on the need to ensure that engagement of the public at all levels is taking as serious as possible. This will require involvement of some of the community leaders in the planning and execution phases. It will also ensure that the communities are carried along whereby their opinions count: securing their buy-in, not as a mere oxymoron, a fluke of sort, but a reality. As a matter of fact, proper awareness and sensitization of the larger community members are expected to be conducted. Contractors handling or executing any Project in a community must be known to the people, duration: commencement and deadline of the project must be made open to them, in addition to the communities having clear knowledge of what the final output or expected outcome of the project is, and their role in terms of supervision of what is on-going in their place known to them. This must also be made very clear to the contractor.
Reports of on-going activities in the communities of the 17 LGAs must be shared with the leaders of the affected communities. This will ensure that all parties (government, contractor and community) are on the same page at every point in time and that variation or gap is easily identified and amends made, without running into a situation where heavy costs may be expended before a community draws attention to such, and going back becomes a huge burden.
Our commitment is the provision of constant and balanced reportage. For this reason we are in the business keenly of reporting entrepreneurship and Development activities governments, and the private sector practitioner. However, the necessary things must always be done to attract our attention to either the current, on-going or previous activities of both sectors, and keep us in business.
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