By Dadson A. Musa
The essence of having a government in place is to serve the masses; give them basic services, protect them and empower them as far as possible.
As one of the main funds utilized by government is taxes that the citizens pay.
So citizens must put their mouths where there money is. Every year, huge chunks of money are allocated to MDAs for service delivery but are there really evaluation of whether every year those targeted services are received by citizens.
As audit reports show year in and year out that the services are hardly delivered but are always largely misappropriated. People don’t feel any tangible or lasting change in their lives.
The situation is far worst in remote rural communities.
In fact it looks like they are not part of government even when they vote and pay taxes.
So it should be posited that apart from auditing, other means of check and evaluation must be put in place on a regular anual basis to see if those services were enjoyed by the people at all. Government most of the time make media- stunt- claims that they have done so many things with nothing on the ground to show for it.
NGOs and other development partners also stand accused of delivering very little on the ground. A huge part of development budget end up in administrative costs where in cozy offices, luxury cars, unjustified per diem, mouthwatering allowances etc , all take up an unfair percentage of the budget. At the end, the vulnerable people are left to their fate. There are various forms of unnecessary administrative budget allocations which hinder service delivery. It is happening across MDAs and among NGOs and civil society organizations. Services are either not delivered or are barely delivered leaving people to suffer more. There are no schools and health centres in some rural areas and people have to cross rivers or commute on dangerous narrow path for miles to access these services. To get development really off the ground, service delivery must supersede administrative cost. If people want to get rich let them go into business or other forms of private practice not through governance. Greed and selfishness is fuelling all of this and is made worse by lack of supervision or strict monitoring. When elections approach they come back to the electorate to be voted again.
The people’s need are of utmost importance must be given priority.