Osun CSDP Advocates Bottom-up Approach For Community Development

General Manager, Community and Social Development Project (CSDP) in Osun, Mrs Oluwafunmilayo Abokede has frowned at inadequate social services at the grassroot level despite the existence of local governments.

She spoke at the innovative quarterly performance review of the activities of CSDP in the 68 Local Councils in the state held in Osogbo, the state capital, advocating the need for bottom-up approach to community development to achieve maximum benefits of community projects.

Abokede lamented that despite the existence of Local Governments, the social conditions in communities in Nigeria are still poor even with the rich endowment of natural and human resources.

According to her, the ‘Top Down, Supply Driven’ approach which was the practice in most local councils has been the bane of development at the grassroot.

She noted that the approach has not been able to meet the actual needs of the communities and that this has led to the poor track records of public service delivery.

She explained that the quarterly performance review was organised to improve the capacity of the Council Managers and Desk Officers on Community Driven Development (CDD) which is Bottom Up and Demand Driven.

Abokede said the CDD approach will ensure that poor communities benefit from and participate in development efforts, adding that CDD is an important approach focusing on appropriate development interventions and at the same time reaching very large numbers of poor people.

She said, the innovative quarterly performance review is also a constructive engagement that serves as a platform for social accountability through which the Council Managers give report of their Local Councils’ Performance on the use of CDD approach and how they have used public resources to deliver services and improve welfare of the people in the communities across the state.

According to her, it is expected that the feedback from the performance review will be used by the Local Councils to improve support for CDD projects, promote accountability in governance and better public service delivery.”

The CSDP performance review was attended by Council Managers and Desk Officers drawn from the 30 Local Governments, 32 Local Council Development Areas, the four Area Councils and the two Administrative Offices in the state.