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Particpants at the one-day workshop.
Civil Society Organisation, Yiaga Africa, has emphasised the need for local governments to adhere strictly to the tenets of democracy to drive growth and development in communities across the 774 local governments in the country.
The organisation stated this in a statement issued on Saturday by its Programme Officer, Olaniyan Sanusi, after a one-day workshop on the People’s Assembly tool for deliberative democracy in Lagos.
Sanusi stated the need for a platform to amplify the voices of the people at the local level in local governance to deliberate on issues affecting their communities, debate on issues and agree on priority issues to engage the local government officials.
He said, “This is a workshop to evaluate how the People’s Assembly has fared as a tool for deliberative democracy. We started the people’s assembly in 2022 and established it in three local governments at the time, but we have now extended it to six local governments.
“We know that the government has a lot of responsibility, and we also know that much of this is based on the availability of resources. This is why we are constantly following up on the local government on issues that the consensus has been reached.
“We are here to have regular deliberations on issues affecting citizens within a particular local government where resolutions are expected to be generated on the way forward.
“Today, we are looking at the outcomes, what has changed, and what the values of this are to the citizens to engage both the state and local government,” he added.
Also speaking, the Vice Chairman of Kosofe local government, Oluwole Sosanya, said the workshop would go a long way in bridging the communication gaps that exist in local governance.
“This is a workshop that brings the people and the elected officials together to have a face-to-face interaction with heads of our local governments.
“This will go a long way because we will be hearing directly from the people, so we will also get to know their needs and work on them.
“In my local government, we are actually very accessible because the local government is the closest to the people,” he averred.
