Pampaida: Millennium Strides in Poverty Elimination
One of the poorest villages in Kaduna State is currently undergoing transformation in less than two years of a vital intervention by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Reuben Buhari, who has been monitoring the developmental progress of Pampaida village writes that when the will is there people can be lifted out of poverty
The arguably poorest village in Kaduna State is witnessing a revolution in the area of poverty alleviation, that is proving to all, especially long-suffering skeptics and policy formulators, that with concerted effort, poverty can be drastically reduced or even totally banished.
Pampaida village in Ikara local government was adjudged by the United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) and the Kaduna State Government to be the poorest village in the State, and that unenviable position ironically led to its selection by the UNDP as one of the two poorest village in Nigeria, to be designated as a Millennium Village.
However, today, the poorest village has become the envy of its neighbours due to the holistic transformation it has undergone in just 19 months, a transformation so revolutionary that seven States have indicated interest in adopting the method applied in Pampaida. Kano State has gone a step further by recently sending a high power delegation to personally visit Pampaida village.
The development in the village is visible in the agricultural sector where a total of N35 million worth of inputs have been injected into the agricultural initiatives, to transit from subsistence to commercial farming. In the educational sector, school enrollment has increased from a baseline of 40 to 1450 pupils presently, helped by the school feeding programme introduced.
The village also has a stocked clinic and a qualified Medical Doctor, in addition to about 500 insect treated nets that was shared to the villagers. 10 boreholes were dug and 38 hand dug wells were rehabilitated and provided with steel cover to keep them from pollution.
The villagers were given two vehicles to serve as ambulances and to convey their produce to the market on a newly constructed 10 kilometer road, in addition to other developmental initiatives.
The concept of the Millennium Villages Project is an integrated development initiative providing instant evidence that, by empowering communities with information, basic necessities and adequate resources, the poorest people in rural Africa can lift themselves out of extreme poverty in five years time and meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by 2015.
The MVP offers a bold innovative method for helping rural African communities lift themselves out of extreme poverty. The millennium villages are proving that by fighting poverty at the village level through community-led development, rural Africa can achieve the Millennium Development Goals global target for reducing extreme poverty and hunger by half.
This can also help improve education, health, gender equality and environmental sustainability by 2015, and escape the extreme poverty affecting hundred of millions of people throughout the African continent.
The first 12 Millennium Villages sites are each located in areas with certain characteristics. The first is in communities described as hunger hot spots where at least 20 percent of the under-five child population are underweight.
The second criterion involves areas where the government is seriously committed to the MDGs, and lastly, one of 12 distinct agro-ecological zones in Africa. But the encompassing yardstick for selecting any location is the presence of total and abject poverty among the inhabitants, of which Pampaida ranks abysmally high.
From a village, where 19 months ago, inhabitants shared an open shallow hole as source of water with their animals, with no access road to the outside world and only one classroom for the past 35 years; and where the only health care center is 10 kilometers away, the village has become a physical attestation of the fact that the MDGs can be achieved and people can be lifted out of extreme poverty when the will is there.
The UN Director of the Millennium Village Project (MVP) in Africa, Prof. Pedro Sanchez was so happy with the development he saw when he came in August 2007 that he described the Pampaida Millennium Village as the best among the 12 villages spread across the African continent; and that the village has shown the visible transformation which proves that poverty can be reduced in Africa.
Sanchez was accompanied to the village by Prof. Ahmed Faliki the National Project Coordinator of Sasakawa Global 2000, Prof. Charyl Pam, the Research Director of the MVP and Mr. Danladi Sanda, the Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Economic Planning Kaduna, where he (Sanchez) lauded the rapid infrastructural transformation of Pampaida within a short time of the commencement of the project as a landmark achievement.
He however expressed worry on what will happen to the village when the UNDP finally pulls out in two years time. "We think it is important to continue the transformation of this village. The sustainability has to be ensured. It can be done if the government is willing to".
"The ultimate challenge facing the village is for the government to keep making policy that will ensure the continued provision of education, health, and agricultural assistance. The villagers too, need to be fully sensitised to the fact that the five-year project which is in its third year will soon end. Very soon they will have to start depending on themselves".
He also posited that it is possible for Nigeria to be fully self- sufficient in food production. "India with a billion people has posed the greatest challenge to Nigerians. It has proved that poverty can be reduced, and is now a food exporting country despite its huge population".
The UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria, Mr. Alberic Kacou also expressed satisfaction with the development he saw when he visited the village in October last year. To him, "poverty can be prevented. For the past 19 months we have worked successfully together toward achieving these goals".
"The results on the ground so far are truly remarkable; cases of malaria are down due to the use of bed-nets; the school has higher attendance due to the feeding programme, construction of additional classrooms and supply of learning materials. The new clinic is teeming with people because of the availability of medicine. In other words, through the Millennium Village projects intervention, rural villagers' lives have been drastically transformed for the better in a very short time".
He added that Pampaida is a showcase to thousands of other rural villages in Africa that need similar attention and promised its inhabitants that UNDP will always "work with them in this historic march against poverty. We shall continue to work with the Kaduna State Government, the National Planning Commission, the Earth Institute of Columbia University, the Millennium Promise, and the Japanese Government to ensure that the citizens of Pampaida led a healthy, prosperous and dignified life".
When the Under-Secretary General and Associate Administrator of the UNDP, Ed Merkert came on January 29 he said the transformational development seen in the village aimed to establish evidence which shows that UN Millennium project's intervention for rural Africa can actually lift villages out of poverty through community empowerment backed with adequate resources.
The occasion which was his first visit to Nigeria coincided with the official switching of the community to the national grid, officially ending its years of being in darkness. The Deputy Governor of Kaduna State, Mr. Patrick Yakowa, who represented the Governor said after switching on the light that Pampaida has entered a new era of development.
The envoy revealed that the UNDP, the Earth Institute of Columbia, Millennium Promise and other partners have indicated their willingness to apply the Pampaida approach to other villages in Nigeria, adding that UNDP will always try to identify the most pressing problems of the community so as to find solution to them.
"The remarkable aspect of the Millennium Villages is that these basic investments can be financed at a total cost of roughly $110 per person for a five year period. The funding model falls within the global commitments donor countries have made over the years to invest 0.7 percent of their gross national income in the development of the world poorest countries.
The $110 is generated by dividing the amount into four places. Out of that amount, $30 comes from local and national governments, $20 from international agencies and contributors, $50 from project donors and $10 from the village either in kinds or in cash.
An area that the MVP is seriously attacking includes the menace of malaria. More than one million African children die of malaria each year, making the disease one of the most burdensome health challenges in any community.
The Millennium Village in Pampaida, Kaduna State has started subduing the problem, with about 5000 insect treated bed-nets distributed to the villagers to reverse the prevalence of malaria in the community.
The project coordinator of the Millennium Village project, Dr. Tony Chovwen while outlining the achievement of the project since its inception 19 months ago, said, "fro
m a community once bereft of all basic infrastructure and social amenities, Pampaida is today being referred to as an emerging city thanks to a good road, an electrification project, new blocks of classroom, new clinic stocked with drugs and qualified health workers"
He also noted that Pampaida is becoming a Mecca of sort due to the influx of visitors within and outside the country coming in to see what is being done in the village.
Like Dr. Bala Yunusa, the Project officer for the Pampaida Millennium Village said, "much has been done but still more needs to be done. Improvement has been witnessed in sectors like the agricultural, health, education, gender and infrastructure, water and sanitation and community mobilisation".
To him however, the remaining two years of the project remain critical in an attempt to prove to the world that when the will is there, and concerted effort is applied, extreme poverty can be eradicated
Thisday News
Nigeria
