Mobilizing Communities in Nigeria

June 10, 2005—Deepali Tewari remembers only too well the beginnings of plans to have the local people as the key drivers of urban community based projects in Nigeria in the spring of 2000.

For her – as the World Bank’s team leader of the community based approach to infrastructure provision in urban areas – it meant meetings with the communities “wherever people lived.”

“I wanted to make the point the World Bank was determined to get to the grassroots and listen,” Tewari says. “I wanted to demonstrate to my client teams that it was ok to ask the communities what they wanted, that it was ok to tell them that top-down projects the Bank supported in the past had not worked, that we were there to learn from the people how to use limited resources better.”

The reality of that meant Tewari, with her client teams, staging open meetings in markets and at street cross roads. If it was night-time, the meetings were conducted with the aid of car headlights.

“There was a lot of enthusiasm in Nigeria at the time, “Tewari says. “It was the first time most of the people were working directly with the Bank. It was the first time they were learning about the demand driven approach to projects.”

The Community-Based Urban Development Project was designed to deliver basic municipal services in poor under-serviced settlements in cities, with the projects specifically designed to meet the priorities of the growing numbers of poor in citites.

Nigeria is urbanizing at a rapid rate, with more than 50 percent of the population expected to live in urban areas by 2007. In a country where more than half of the population lives on less than US$1 a day, most Nigerian cities are ill-equipped to provide basic needs for the majority of the existing population, let alone their projected numbers.

World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz will see first hand tangible evidence of the project when he visits Bauchi state during his trip to Nigeria. There Wolfowitz will visit health centers, schools and other urban infrastructure built with the support of the Bank’s community-based urban development project.

The project sites in Bauchi city lies within the old walled city – although some of the historic walls had been destroyed through previous unrelated developments. Engaging with the Bank has contributed to raising awareness about the historic and cultural value of the ancient mud buildings that are over 100 years old. Wolfowitz will have the chance to meet people who’ve benefited from the project as well as workers at various project sites in Bauchi state. 
 
The design of the community based urban development project in Nigeria – funded with US$110 million from the Bank – builds on the lessons learnt from more than three decades of international experience with urban projects around the world - Calcutta, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria and many other countries.

And the experience from community based urban projects shows there can be significant improvements in the lives of the poor through small investments in basic services and infrastructure. They also help empower the population, as people are given a voice in the choice of infrastructure and the level of the services they receive. During the planning stages, communities were encouraged to set up representative groups to engage with government design teams.

Tewari says while the projects themselves delivered results on the ground, an added value of the preparation process, was that it has made many officials in the State Governments “believers” in community consultation.

In the second phase of the project, the officials have the opportunity to choose to make large city-wide infrastructure investments, but the “civil servants who have worked closely with the people, want to invest inside the settlements of more communities, and not lose sight of the needs of the poor in cities – they want to balance investments for city-wide infrastructure with on-site investments in communities” she says.

The projects she says have also prompted a change in the part of the government’s procurement practices.

 “They’ve adopted competitive practices, as they’ve seen for themselves that small amounts of money can go a longer way with competitive procurement.”