Town Hall meeting in Kawu Community
Kawu, a community in Lapai about hundred and forty (140) kilometres away from Minna, the capital city of Niger State. It has a population of about three thousand (3000) people with other depending communities.
Tracka organised an advocacy awareness engagement for the community based on the 2018 budget provision for the ELECTRIFICATION OF KAWU COMMUNITY WITH I NO 300 KVA /33KV/0.45-VOLT SUB-STATION IN LAPAI LGA, NIGER STATE. The team enlightened the community on budget processes, cycles and how projects are been nominated by their representatives.
Most members of the community including the district head said they are not aware of the proposed project by their representatives. They disclosed that it is coming to their notice for the first time that such a project has been nominated for the community.
For over 3 decades now, this community has not had electricity, what they get is lots of promises from the government and also representatives during the campaign.
Speaking to Tracka, a member of the community, Nurudeen describes the situation as horrible, “we have to go extra-mile in the purchase of transformer, some people came claiming that they are from PHCN, they demanded some money and the community contributed some money and handed over to the PHCN staffs till date we did not hear from them.”
”The community has applied all avenue to reach out to the government concerning electrification all to no avail”, he added.
Furthermore, the community is in dire need of the government intervention for the provision of schools, primary health care centre, boreholes. At the moment, there is even no access to news, radio and other activities regarding electricity for over 3 decades. Which has affected their development.
During the visit, the Project Tracking Officer, Motoni Moses also discovered the poor state of the school in the community; a block of two classrooms with pupil’s seat was tagged Primary 1-6. The whole of the school is just a block of two classrooms, how the school manage this leaves so much to be desired.
Also, the Primary health centre found in the community is just a dispensary unit for drugs. According to the community head “sometimes issues that cannot be attended to, we travel for about 100km to Lapai town or Suleja (150km). On several occasions, we have lost loved ones most especially during childbirth in the process.”
In addition, there is no potable drinking water serving the community, they solely depend on a stream for drinking and feeding of livestock and other activities.
After the session, the district head and community members expressed their satisfaction with the sensitization programme and vowed to follow-up to ensure implementation of the project when these funds are released. They expressed their profound gratitude to Tracka (BudgIT) team for making such information handy to them
The Tracka team shared the 2018 printed FG budget publication to residents of Kawu community and encouraged them to follow up the project in their community and demand for accountability from their elected representatives since development in any nation is a function of a leadership which subscribes to the principle of accountability at various levels.
