Participatory Community-Driven Development and Sustainable Rural Development in Nigeria

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, community driven development has emerged as one of the fastest growing investments by donor agencies. It emerged against the conventional top-down syndrome which never had any sustainable impact on the living conditions of community members especially in rural Nigeria. Participatory development is a way of learning from and with community members to investigate, analyse, and evaluate constraints and opportunities, and make informed and timely decisions regarding development projects. The key elements of a successful community driven development projects are participation, sustainability and an enabling policy environment. Therefore, the micro-projects programme embarked upon by the European Union in the Oil producing areas of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria was evaluated based on the key elements. It was realized that the non-participation of all the subgroups in the communities, unsustainaility plan, and lack of enabling policy environment led to the abandonment of some of the projects in some communities. Therefore, the good intention of the donor agencies of reducing poverty in the rural communities, reaching out to the disadvantage groups, easing social tension and ensuring sustainable development of the rural areas have been negated.