IMPLEMENTING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT – STRATEGIES AND INITIATIVES IN HIGH CONSUMPTION SOCIETIES

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background to the study

Poverty is a multi-dimensional societal phenomenon in which people cannot actively live their desired lives, explore resources to make a living for themselves – a situation which incapacitate them from active participation in the socioeconomic and socio-political equations of their society. United Nations (1995) adopted two definitions of poverty: Absolute poverty, a situation conditioned by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food in appropriate quantity and quality, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services. On the other hand, Overall poverty in its multi-conceptual forms, including lack of source of income and productive resources to ensure sustainable living, hunger and malnutrition, ill health, limited or lack of access to fundamental education, increased morbidity and mortality from illness, homelessness and inadequate housing, unsafe environments and social discrimination and exclusion. It is also characterized by lack of participation in decision making and in civil, social and cultural life. WeisfeldAdams and Andrzejewski (2018) revealed that according to the World Bank (2018), people living on less than

US$1 per day are living in extreme poverty, and people who earn less than US$2 a day are in moderate poverty. The study further stated that UNDP (2017) revealed that approximately one billion people live on less than US$1 a day. About 2.6 billion live on less than US$2 a day. This amounts to 40% of the world’s population. In SubSaharan Africa, 41% of the population lives on less than US$1 a day (Population Reference Bureau, 2016).

Poverty reduction has received increased focus in development debate in the past two decades. Progress on poverty reduction has become a major measure of success of development policy. In the 1970s and 1980s, the preoccupation was with growth, the need to grow the economies and incomes. Thus, growth was seen as a prerequisite for improved welfare. Many developing countries in the 1980s implemented structural adjustment programmes (SAP) aimed at enhancing growth. Following these programmes, many countries recorded positive real growth rates. The development literature in the 1990s was dominated by the view that growth is central to any strategy aimed at poverty reduction. Studies suggest that countries that made noticeable progress on poverty reduction were those which recorded fast and high growth rates (World Bank 2000, Dollar and Kraay 2000).

Across the globe, especially in third world countries, people wallow in abject poverty - a cankerworm against growth and development. Sometimes, people go to bed with empty stomach without hope of what to eat the following day and perhaps, malnutrition becomes customary. Some don’t have shelter over their heads; health care delivery system and electricity are alien to some communities; pipe borne water, lack of qualitative or limited access to or total lack of education and endemic diseases has taken over some territories; lots of mothers and children die during child birth on a daily basis, some environment are not conducive to human habitation due to environmental degradation; while some still live in the stone age societies where there is basically no form of civilization, presence of social discrimination and exclusion as well as the lack of participation in decision making. There are many developing countries in the world with precarious development indices. For example, it is said that more than 1.2 billion people or about 20 per cent of the world population live or survive on less than US 1 per day (Shetty, 2015).

The fight against poverty has been a central plank of development planning since independence in 1960 and about fifteen ministries, fourteen specialized agencies, and nineteen donor agencies and non-governmental organizations have been involved in the decades of this crusade but about 70 per cent of Nigerians still live in poverty, (Soludo, 2013). Literatures have unanimously agreed that successive government’s interventions have failed to achieve the objectives for which they were established (Ovwasa, 2000; Adesopo, 2018; Omotola, 2018). The failure to effectively combat the problem has largely been blamed on infrastructural decay, endemic corruption, and poor governance and accountability (Okonjo-Iweala, et al 2013).

Community development is a strategy or approach for improvement that is directed towards a specific field of social development requiring action on the part of the people to improve their condition of living, whether social, economic or cultural. Its effect in the field of social development is socially conditioned, since it brings about awareness and the improvement of relationships between individuals, groups, communities and organizations to ensure a sustained development. In this light, from a humanitarian perspective, it may be seen as a search for community, mutual aid, social support and human liberation in an alienating, oppressive, competitive and individualistic society. In its more pragmatic institutional sense, it may be viewed as a means for mobilizing communities to join state or institutional initiatives that are aimed at alleviating poverty, solving social problems, strengthening families, fostering democracy and achieving modernization and socio-economic development (Campfens cited in Ohiani, 2016).Therefore, attempt is made to Implementing Sustainable Development: Strategies and Initiatives in High Consumption Societies, with particular reference to Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

1.2. Statement of the Research Problem

It is important to recognize that most of the challenges of development in Nigeria are a clear manifestation of the weakness in the strategies adopted by the government, from Federal, State, and Local Government. Most of the development strategies adopted by government are mostly those that are top-down in their approaches. For example, the development programmes to empower the people or enhance community development from time, such as DFRRI, NAPEP NEEDS with state and local versions are all not people friendly, since the people were not involved or carried along. This makes community development to suffer and thereby frustrating sustainable development goals. This is because the input from the people was not included, despite the fact that the development was targeted at them (Obetta and Charity, 2012).

The people lacked sense of belonging to any of government projects or programmes, they never felt as if they were part of the development effort of their communities, which affected the maintenance of those projects, leading to the problem of not sustaining those facilities or programmes put in place to serve the people. In some communities in Chikun Local Government, like any other communities within the country, there are projects initiated and implemented by the government that are no longer serving the purpose which they were meant for because the community’s inputs were neglected. For example the solar boreholes of Ungwan Bije-Kakau ward, the solar borehole in Sarki Street Ungwan Romi Yelwa/Romi Ward worked for only a year and are no longer functioning. Also in Kakau community, about seven boreholes were sunk by the L.G. only the one in front of the house of a member of house of representative representing the constituency is functioning. Most of government projects and programmes provided by government within the local government area are not properly maintained, thereby leading to problem of sustainability.

It is mostly a top-down approach to community development, which makes projects and programs unsustainable due to misplaced priorities, as to what the people need, is not what is given to them, but what the donors feel they need.

It is against this background that the study explores how, and what model to be used for community development to serve as a veritable strategy for sustainable development goals in Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

1.3. Research questions

1. How relevant were the community development projects and programmes on sustainable development goals in Chikun Local Government Area?

2. To what extent can community participation leads to sustainable development goals in Chikun Local Government Area?

1.4. Objective of the study

The major objective of this study is to examine the implementing sustainable development: strategies and initiatives in high consumption societies in Chikun Local Government Area, Kaduna State from 2015 to 2020.

The specific objectives of this study are to:

1. Determine the relevance of community development projects and programmes and their effects on sustainable development goals in Chikun Local Government Area;

2. Examine the effects of community participation on sustainable development goals in Chikun Local Government Area Kaduna State.

1.5. Hypothesis of the study

The Propositions for the research work are:

H_O1: Community Development Projects and Programmes are not of great relevance to Sustainable development goals in Chikun Local Government Area.

H_O2: Community Participation on Projects and Programmes to a greater extent do not lead to Sustainable development goals in Chikun Local Government Area.

1.6. Scope and Delimitation of the Study

1.6.1. Scope of the Study

This study covers a period of five years, 2015-2020. The researcher chooses this period in other to make a reasonable and proper appraisal on community development projects and programmes within Chikun Local Government Area and how they continue to serve the purpose which they are executed.

The specific areas dealt with are:

The contributions of government to community development in Chikun Local Government Area, self-help efforts within the local government area; the maintenance culture of the government; and of the people in the communities of developmental projects and programmes.

Chikun Local government area has 11 wards. The study covers about 4 different communities selected across these wards as the research empirical coverage (2 Urban and 2 Rural. Communities such as Sabon-Tasha, under Sabo Ward, Kakau community under Kakau Ward and Ungwan Romi/Agyeita community under Yelwa/Romi Ward and Kakau Ward

respectively). This is done in order to make careful and proper findings within the Local Government Area; chikun is seen as one of those Local Governments in the state that has the population of both urban and rural communities in order to study the community development activities of the various communities. Sabo and Romi communities cover the urban communities, while Agyeita and Kakau covers the rural communities. Also chikun local government is chosen as the research empirical scope because meaningful community development activities is said to have taken place in the local government, so the study access most of these projects and programmes.

1.6.2. Limitation of the Study

The study in limited to only Chikun Local Government Area, the major limitation of this study is the problem of very poor record keeping in Chikun local government; Most of their records were burnt by fire inferno that gutted some of the offices in the local council secretariat. It was a great task to get documented data, on community development projects and programmes within the local government.

Secondly, the study has the problem of the attitude of some local government officials‟ respondents, especially (the political class) who were either absent from office and or very often feel reluctant to sit and attend to our questions. It took a long period of time, over seven months of the researcher’s repeated visit to their offices and sometimes their homes, before some of the officials could attend to our questions.

The third and last problem is the problem of time. The limited time we have for the study could not give us the opportunity to cover more communities than we would have done. In our effort to ameliorate the adverse effect of the research limitations, we went extra miles to the State

Ministry for Community and Rural development to get meaningful data on this regard. We also visited the local government secretariat and even officials houses to get primary data for the research work and personal observation of checklist of issues.

1.7. Significance of the Study

Although the research is carried out to fulfill an academic requirement, it will also go beyond that scope encouraging more meaningful and conscious development efforts on the part of Community people. Previous studies on development have often laid emphasis on Community development as one among numerous strategies employed by government for development, not paying attention as to whether the development is sustainable or not, and what are those salient issues in Community development that will ensure Sustainable development goals.

Therefore, the study laid emphasis on the issue of Community development in a participatory manner, Jumare and Mohammed (2012), in a study on the effort of Community development in sustainable development goals concluded that, most common of the problems of Sustainable development goals is the problem of poor participation of beneficiaries of the development. With the mode of collaborative and collective action by the people and the government. The collaborative mode of Community development postulated that local people work together with outsiders to determine priorities, responsibility remains with outsiders for directing the process. While the collective action mode postulate that local people set the agenda and mobilize to carryout, utilizing outsiders not as initiators or facilitators, but as required by local people. This mostly is done in projects or programmes that require quick action to be taken Nicole (2002). This study is in line with the above scholars, with a paramount significance of filling the gap that most researches in the field of Community Development are yet to fill, in bringing out Community development strategy that will be more Sustainable for development (projects and programmes to continue serving the need which they are created).