Importance Of Participation In Community Development

Citizen participation is a very critical aspect of the developmental process of any community. Botes and van Resensburg (2000) posited that “participatory development is very essential to the community development process”. This perhaps is because community development itself is meant to bring about improved living standard for community members, and not necessarily the initiators or executors of the community development project should they be from outside the benefitting community. Consequently, it is only logical that the people, for whom the project is design, be involved in the decision making process, beginning from the initial stage of needs assessment to the implementation and execution stages. More so, citizens’ participation in the developmental process that concerns them ensures speedy development and brings about a sense of importance and ownership, which ultimately translates to commitment and also helps in capacity building.

The World Bank in 1996 proposed some reasons for community participation, amongst which are that: community members have the true knowledge of what their felt needs are, and that they equally have self-awareness as to the solution that would or would not work; participation brings about a sense of importance and ‘ownership’ which translate into more commitment to the community development programmes and projects. It also helps to build members’ capacity, which in turn, increases available human resource; and that it bridges the gap between professionals and community members, with each group, learning from the other.

The reasons so enumerated, are indicative of the fact that when a people for whom a project is meant are side-lined, in terms of being giving room to participate in the decision maki...

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...sfully executed and sustained community development projects in Oredo Local Government Council. That being the case, the question then is; do the citizenry really know the importance of participating in community development processes? To what extent are the citizenry involved in the decision making and developmental processes that concerns them? In the circumstance of the aforementioned importance of citizen participation in the community development processes especially as it concerns them - environmentally, socio-politically, economically or otherwise, this paper sought to resolve the queries raised, in order to ascertain the reason or reasons behind the success or failure of most projects embarked upon by the Government, even as it firstly elucidate the meaning and relevance of community development, as well as the principles of community citizens’ participation