Yuletide: Lagos urges vigilance, decentralizes Community Day

Lagos State Government has called on residents of the state to be vigilant as this Yuletide season, even as it decentralized this year’s Community Day, CD, celebration to the 57 councils.

At a news conference at the weekend to announce this year’s CD, Special Adviser to the Governor on Community and Communications, Kehinde Bamigbetan said all hands must be on deck to ensure security at the grassroots in the state.

He announced that it has decentralized the yearly celebration of CD in the State, saying that the celebration would now hold in all 20 Local Government Areas and 37 Local Council Development Areas to further enrich community participation in all nooks and crannies of the State.

Bamigbetan said the celebration is slated for Wednesday, December 6 and that it was expected to be marked at designated venues in LGAs and LCDAs to be followed by the grand finale at the Adeyemi Bero auditorium, the Secretariat, Alausa, Ikeja.

The special adviser said the decision to incorporate LCDAs into the celebration was informed by the impressive performance of the various Community Development Associations, CDAs and Community Development Committees, CDCs across the State over the years.

He said government hoped that the decentralization of the celebration would result in increased communalism by the various communities, while commending the over 3,900 CDAs in the State for initiating various self-help projects and for complementing government’s efforts in their various localities.

Bamigbetan said that the Ministry of Local Government and Communities Affairs had compiled the various needs of communities in the State through a need assessment survey it conducted recently, assuring that provision of infrastructural amenities in the various communities would henceforth be guided by the outcome of the Survey.

He disclosed that members of the Organised Private Sector, OPS had already been acquainted by state government on communities’ needs so that the needs of these communities would serve as a guide to the private sector when embarking on their Corporate Social Responsibilities, CSR.

“What the State Government is doing now is that we are addressing needs mis-match, we want the various developmental strides in all the communities to be far-reaching and very impactful. I am glad to report to you that residents of Apapa recently received the donation of 6 boats by a private company to ease access to the Mainland by residents of the area. This was as a result of our engagement with the OPS few months ago on CSR.” He said.

He listed some of the recent achievements of the Office in the last 29 months to include, the up scaling of the role of CDAs in service delivery at the state and local government through support for monthly interactive sessions with ministries, departments and agencies to discuss the direction of government strategies.

“The monitoring, evaluation and feedback roles of CDAs in project initiation, execution and delivery, the visibility accorded the CDAs in the organisation of government programmes, the renewed guidelines to local governments emphasizing the consultation of, and partnership with community development associations as a code of governance of this administration and many more.”