Actionaid Nigeria has urged the people of Dakwa community in Abuja Municipal Area Council to engage their political representatives and hold them accountable on basic and social amenities.
The organisation which focuses on eradicating poverty and promotion of rights of the people, gave the advice during a town hall meeting with leaders and members of the community as part of activities to mark the International Anti-Corruption Day Tuesday.
Actionaid project manager for the partnership and local rights programme in the FCT, Mr Sani Ibrahim, told the community that they were entitled to basic social amenities like schools, good roads, water, electricity among others which are usually budgeted for by the government under every constituency projects.
He stressed the need for them to know the constituency projects for their community and the amount budgeted for such project and engages in dialogue with their leaders at the local government level to ensure those projects are implemented.
He said that they would need to engage with their legislators to find out the constituency projects on ground for their community. “Is it light, water, school, electricity? When you do this, your leaders will know there are people at the community level who are interested in knowing this and this will make them to begin to work for the good of the community,” he said.
Earlier, the representative of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mrs Alice Adama, lauded Actionaid for consistent support and concern to communities across the nation.
“We aren’t here to teach you what to do but to guide you around the privileges you have to enjoy as citizens of this great nation Nigeria. You have every right to stand up for yourselves if anything is going contrary to the plan of the federal government for you as a people because corruption has eaten deep our society and this is wrong,” she said.
Speaking with journalists, the village head of the community, Shuaibu Samu thanked Actionaid Nigeria for supporting his community, especially in the area of capacity building, education and sensitisation.
