Nigeria

UNDP Millennium Village sets standards for local development in Nigeria

For Philibus Dandima, a farmer and Town Crier for the Pampaida Community, the results of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) in Pampaida have been quite remarkable. In his words, “as a citizen of this place, I am a witness to a lot of the improvements since the inception of the project agriculture has improved, through introduction of dry season farming techniques and livestock farming. More and more of our children are benefiting from the interventions in education, including my children, Daniel and Alsabatu, who are both now in secondary school. My last child Daudu is in primary school and benefits from the MVP school feeding programme which is supported by a contribution of 10% of the Pampaida Community grains harvest”.

Ad Melkert, UNDP Associate Administrator in the company of Patrick Yakowa, Deputy Governor of Kaduna State commissions the Pampaida Community grain storage facility.

Accompanied by Mr Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa, Deputy-Governor of the state of Kaduna and Albéric Kacou, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria, the UNDP Associate Administrator, Ad Melkert visited Pampaida - a Millennium Village in Kaduna State with 5000 people - as part of his three-day working visit to Nigeria. The Pampaida Millennium Village Project is a partnership between UNDP, Pampaida community, Ikara local government, Kaduna State government, other donors including the Japanese Government and Millennium Promise. The lives of the people of Pampaida have been transformed: villagers have benefited from increased agricultural produce and farmers now have greater access to markets to sell their tomatoes and other produce; a clinic has been built in the village and 12 new bore holes have been drilled and 38 hand-dug wells are serving the potable waters needs of the people to provide access to drinking water. During his visit to Pampaida, Melkert inaugurated a new community school kitchen, “the introduction of the school feeding programme not only ensures that girls and boys are well-fed but that they have full stomachs to go to school on a more regular basis.” Enrolment in primary schools has risen from 400 at the start of the project to over 1200 by the end of 2007.

However Pampaida is one village amongst thousands in Nigeria. The sustainability of such a rural development approach focused on one village points to the need for local government commitment and linkages with policy and budgetary decision-making. There are early signs that ‘borrowing’ from the lessons of Pampaida to the rest of Kaduna state are being embraced at the Governor’s level but challenges still remain.

Rightly or wrongly Nigeria is often perceived negatively in the international press as a country marred by greedy elite oil barons and corrupt officials. Despite these perceptions there have been pockets of positive progress for which Nigeria should be acknowledged. The new Government is determined to address long term development issues through its Vision 2020 - the ambition to become one of the world’s leading 20 economies by 2020. In the medium term the President has outlined his 7 point agenda of socio-economic and political reforms to fast track the Vision.

The potential for Nigeria to be a world economic player exists, but the credibility of the process in the eyes of Nigerians will only be supported if such a Vision becomes reality and not just a fad. This means delivering tangible progress in health, education and basic services in particular to 52% of the population that live on less than 1 dollar per day (equivalent to 72.8 million Nigerians). Melkert commented that “human development should not only be an outcome of economic progress but a condition for growth in Nigeria.”

Melkert discussed the issues of MDG progress with Government officials in Abuja, including the Ministers of Finance, National Planning, the Senate President and the Special Assistant to the President on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Currently data is only available to calculate that the MDG of achieving universal primary education by 2015 is likely to be on track. There is an enormous data gap for the other MDGs. Melkert noted that “without sound disaggregated data, policy makers can not ensure that budgetary allocations at the federal, state and local levels are in line with the achievement of the MDGs.”