Kogi State government has been urged to overhaul health and education facilities in rural communities.
ActionAid Nigeria made the call at a Local Rights Programme (LRP) Community Impact Assessment Validation and Desk Review Meeting organised by the non-governmental organisation in collaboration with its local rights partner in Kogi, Participation Initiative for Behavioural Change in Development (PIBCID). The event was held in Lokoja.
Halima Sadiq, executive director, PIBCID, said most rural communities lacked adequate medical and health personnel to man their primary and secondary health facilities, adding that the situation had inhibited their quality health care delivery.
Sadiq said ActionAid had been on ground in Kogi since 2007 intervening in the Education and Health sectors, among others.
“In Igalamela-Odolu and Adavi Local Government communities, we built health centres. The issue now is that there are no equipment and health personnel at the various health centres.
“It is the communities that sometimes deploy efforts to get their sons and daughters who are trained health personnel, put them there and pay them stipends with funds from voluntary sources; this is not sustainable,” Sadiq said.
She also said that most government and community schools in Kogi rural areas lacked qualified teachers and facilities thereby, hindering quality education.
“We have schools built in many communities across the state but they are lacking teachers.
“We have had series of advocacy for Youth Corps members to be deployed to these schools, but that also, is not enough,” she said.
Sadiq said that the tenures of various interventions by donor agencies and partners were phasing out.
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She urged the State Government and its relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to sustain the interventions and improve lives at the grassroots.
Hajar Adamu, ActionAid Advisor, Partnership and Local Rights Programmes Officer, said the project was also aimed at enhancing the capacity of women who were critical stakeholders in any society.
She said before the intervention of ActionAid in Kogi communities, women were living in seclusion while issues of enforcement of rights were simply not there.
“Since our engagement with them, we have continued to build their capacities and most of them have been empowered so much that they can now advocate for their rights as women,” she said.
Clement Ekeoba, a Consultant with ActionAid, said the purpose of the LRP Impact Assessment was to help provide evidence on how it had been able to engage with policymakers and service providers to be more responsive and accountable to citizens.
He said that the LRP also aimed to better articulate the demands and entitlements in rural and marginalised communities, especially for women and girls.
Participants at the meeting were drawn from Ministries of Women Affairs, Education and Health, Departments and Agencies departments, Inclusive Forum for Accountable Society (IFAS) and other stakeholders.
