By Blessing Bature-Akpakpan, Abuja

The Humanitarian Minister, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq has said that about 5,764 classrooms, 1,323 health centres and 4,442 water micro projects have been constructed and rehabilitated by the Community and Social Development Project (CSDP).

She said this at the event marking the end of the Community and Social Development Project (CSDP), yesterday in Abuja, that the CSDP has achieved successful completion of 16,166 micro-projects in 5,664 communities and 934 vulnerable groups.

Stated that these micro-projects cut across eight sectors of intervention namely education, health, water, transportation, electrification, socio-economic, environment and community housing, adding that about 5,764 classrooms, 1,323 health centres and 4,442 water micro projects were constructed and or rehabilitated.

Farouq said, “the above results demonstrates that the community driven development approach adopted as the implementation strategy in the CSDP is not only reliable but produces results and should be sustained by the participating states and beyond.  The number of expressions of interest from poor communities and vulnerable groups is unprecedented. 

“This points to the fact that devolving implementation power to the communities has intrinsic propensity to accelerate poverty reduction and recovery of the economy from crises. CSDP projects across the country have records of very good maintenance and sustainability”.

Farouq added that through the unique approach, CSDP has implemented micro projects in poor communities across the 543 Local Government Areas of 29 states and the Federal Capital Territory.  This represents about 70% of the total number of Local Governments in Nigeria.  The poor communities are identified specifically through the use of Poverty Maps agreed to by each participating State and FCT.

The Project has made substantial impact on improving access of the poor and vulnerable to social and natural resources infrastructure across the benefitting communities, saying It is however that the Project became effective in 2009, and has had two Additional Financings, all totaling USD415 million.  In its over 11 years of existence, the CSDP has evolved into one of the strong pillars for the implementation of the Social Protection Programmes of the Federal Government under the supervision of the Humanitarian Ministry through the National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO).