By UVOBPI
Dear Badagrians and Fellow Nigerians,
The team at the United Voice of Badagry People Initiative (UVOBPI) warmly welcomes you to the start of a new calendar year, 1 January 2021. We thank everyone who has been committed and actively engaged in Badagry’s progress during 2020.
Your commitment and loyalty are remarkable. Your voices have indeed echoed across Nigeria and the world at large. Your ability to stay politically neutral in a troubled community was noted. UVOBPI’s motto remains the same, “working together to move Badagry forward” and UVOBPI is “politically neutral”.
We denounce all and any form of violent activity. We educate our people about the impact of corruption on economic development. We encourage our young ones to improve their future potential.
If you are reading this letter, and benefiting from our statements, UVOBPI thanks you for being a loyal follower and good ambassador to our local communities.
We sincerely thank you from the heart as you continue to abide with UVOBPI’s rules, policies and standards. Despite the unrest in 2020 in Nigeria, especially, the #ENDSARS movement that rocked Nigeria, you continue to remain politically neutral. In light of this, there are a few things that UVOBPI would love to draw your focus upon:
• Corruption must be spoken against openly
• Corrupt individuals in our communities influencing ordinary Badagrians and Nigerian youths at large must be spoken against openly
• Corrupt leaders influencing our young talented youths must be spoken against openly
To help us understand the danger corruption poses for economic development, UVOBPI has put together the following analysis. It is when we understand the dangers of corruption, and collectively do something about this, can we have successful development in our local communities. Until our youths stop engaging in corrupt dealings with corrupt leaders and corrupt individuals in our communities, there will be little development in our communities. This is the time to think critically and engage positively and constructively in our local communities. We invite you to work together with us to deconstruct bad behaviour and corruption in our communities.
We appeal to you to read this and not to miss out on this enlightening programme. We thank you dearly!
Our findings and analysis:
There are many NGOs in Nigeria. What values do these organisations bring to local communities in Nigeria? What is the impact on you personally in your local community?
The missions taken on by diverse NGOs such as UVOBPI are extremely useful in Nigeria and in our localities in Badagry. However, the issue is that corruption is being weakly challenged at a local community level. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) targets a specific “big fish” or “small fish” in the fight against corruption, but misses out actors in our local communities. These communities are vulnerable to systemic corruption and its impact cannot be overlooked (EFCC, 2020).
Many civil society organisations want development in our local communities, but corruption makes it complicated for development to succeed. And because corruption is systemic, not only at local levels, the authorities cannot cope with the fight against corruption. Many big and small fish exist within the fight corruption agenda, making it a severe challenge for social and economic development.
It is encouraging to learn that many of our local NGOs and International NGOs have a lot of knowledge and experience, but also that they motivate the community to change, with the aim of achieving development goals (Nigerian Finders, 2020). However, the reality is that the fight against corruption should not only be focused on the top-levels only. This fight needs to narrow down to a community level, because our leaders at both the top and the bottom levels are equally members of our local communities.
NGOs provide the opportunity to improve our community’s understanding of corruption’s impact on economic development. We learn about how to manage our programmes and determine the social indicators of our projects as well as measure its success through monitoring and evaluation. Doing this, we study the inputs, outputs, and impact. In particular, we ask: does our structure work? How can our target audience benefit in the present and/or in the future?
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