National Wire About Nigerians, Nigerian Business and Other Stories
Members of the communities in Ikorodu North LCDA have been enjoined to avoid partisanship while engaging with their duty bearers.
The call was made at Ikorodu, Lagos State on Thursday 27th January by a social activist, Mr. Francis Abayomi who facilitated a session during the training of community leaders on engaging the duty bearers.
The training anchored by the International Press Centre (IPC) and titled ‘Enhancing Inclusive Grassroots Development With Duty Bearers In Lagos’ was supported by the British Council through funding by the European Union.
Abayomi who is a member of the Editorial Board of the Daily Independent newspapers expressed joy as the IPC is incorporating the media in the process of engaging the duty bearers to deliver their duties to the grassroots.
“Democracy cannot deliver good governance when citizens who are the electorate don’t have constant interaction with those they have elected,” he said.
Stating further, Abayomi said, “The whole essence of mandate protection is about people having access to leadership, it is only when you have access to leadership that you can be talking about your challenges in the communities.”
He also said the electorate cannot appraise the elected officials if they don’t monitor their duties and follow up on electoral promises.
“This program for me is one of those programs that will build confidence of the people in democracy in such a way that once people see that it is possible to bring things concerning their rights to the attention of their leaders, I’m sure it will increase participation in politics and the democratic process,” he said.
Applauding the exercise, he added that, “The beauty of this training is the media aspect of it that the media is now being incorporated and as a driving force into the democratic process is something I consider very noble.
On sponsorship of the program which he advised should be continuous to achieve lasting result and give monitoring orientation to the people at the grassroots, Abayomi applauded the sponsors and the implementers of the project that has achieved results in some communities.
“I don’t know how long this project will last, may be one year at the first instance, even after the sponsorship, I feel it will be nice if local actors can support this project with local funding to continue it and achieve more results,” he said.
He however sounded a note of warning in case the grassroots in the future may want to involve local funding to run the engagement.
“As a note of caution, we should de-emphasis politics. Political partisanship should be taken out of it. I think part of the way is to insulate the process from partisan politics. Stakeholders can be part of it, not in terms of money but in terms of supporting with their time, ideas and materials,” he advised.
He also advised the community leaders who were representatives at the training about how to deepen the process even after the expiration of the funding.
“There must be a way to sustain some of the gains that have been made by this advocacy. There should be a way to source for more support to engage the duty bearers. Engaging them actively will bring dividends of democracy and also encourage people to be part of the political process, it will reflect in the number of voters and reduce voter apathy,” he said.
Also at the event, IPC’s Program Officer, Mr. Abiodun Adeleke enjoined the participants to use their voting numbers to negotiate for development because that is their main power to attract dividends of democracy to their localities.
“We have to engage our duty bearers and take them to task. We must know the voting strength of our localities that brought the duty bearers to power and use this in negotiating for development,” he said.
He however enjoined participants to visit the Local Government Offices on issues. “How many people have been to the local government office? Are the government offices accessible to people living with disabilities? These are things we should look into,” he said.
Adeleke also advised the participants to mind gender equality while selecting delegation to government offices. “You must include women representatives in order to show gender sensitivity. Women are very important and are great negotiators, your team must have enough female representatives,” he advised.
Participants at the event also brainstormed on advocacy strategies during a breakout session and promised to mobilise themselves skillfully to engage their duty bearers.
The various breakout groups made presentations at the end of the discussions.
