DETERMINANTS OF CITIZENS’ PARTICIPATION IN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS IN OSUN STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Community development is a global adopted concept for improving the quality of life of residents in a locality. Several reports have identified education as the most important component of this approach as it ensures learnipng to become responsible citizen members and building strong society and emotional skills. However, reports have shown that citizens‘ mobilisation and engagement towards the development of their communities have been on the decline in Osun State, Nigeria. Previous studies concentrated more on governmental, nongovernmental and international agencies‘ interventions which is more of top-down approach than on Citizens‘ Participation (CP) that is bottom-top approach. This study, therefore, was designed to examine the determinants of CP (leadership style, members‘ attitude to community projects, educational background, gender-related cultural issues, socio-economic status and projects‘ location) and Community Development Projects (CDPs) in Osun State, Nigeria. This study was anchored to the Ladder of CP Theory, while the mixed methods design was adopted. Two Local Government Areas (LGAs) were randomly selected from each of the existing senatorial districts, while 10 registered Community Development Associations (CDAs) were purposively selected from each LGA. Two hundred CDA members were randomly selected from the selected LGAs, totalling 1, 200 members. The instruments used were CP (r=0.86), Leadership Style (r=0.75), Gender-related Cultural Issues (r=0.76), Attitude to CDPs (r=0.75), Project Location (r=0.77) and CP Challenges (r=0.78) questionnaires. Six sessions of focus group discussion were conducted with four CDA executive per LGA, while 12 Community Development Inspectors (CDIs) were interviewed. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson‘sproduct moment correlation and multiple regression at 0.05 level of significance, while qualitative data were content-analysed. The respondents‘ mean age was 43.56±3.20 years and 56.0% were male. The CDAs‘ meetings (69.4%), community meetings (66.7%), landlord associations (56.9%), town crier (56.9%) and religious organisations (55.6%) were major platforms for citizens‘ mobilisation. Leadership style ( ̅=3.75), socio-economic status ( ̅=3.07), educational background ( ̅=2.85), Genderrelated Cultural Issues ( ̅=3.11), attitude to CDPs ( ̅=2.79), projects location ( ̅=3.19) and CP in community development ( ̅=3.29) were high against the 2.50 threshold. Leadership style (r=0.19), projects location (r=0.15) and socio-economic status (r=0.10) had the positive significant relationships with CDPs, while citizens‘ attitude (r=-0.01) had a negative significant relationship. There was a joint contribution of the determinants of CP in CDPs (F(6; 920)=8.63; Adj R2=0.05), accounting for 5.0% of its variance. Leadership style (β=0.15), project location (β=0.12) and attitude to CDPs (β=0.11) relatively contributed to CP. About 51.0% of the respondents complained about the time of meeting, and meeting days which often fall on market days, lack of trust on the part of the members of the executive and lack of resource for mobilisation hindered CP. The CDIs acceded to the fact that logistics, funds and projects‘ site hindered CP. Leadership style, projects‘ location and attitude to community development projects determined citizens‘ participation in community development projects in Osun State, Nigeria. Government at various levels, policy makers and implementers, and community development agencies should support citizens‘ optimum participations in community development projects using the bottom-top approach.