Gov Otu Must Tilt Towards Needs Assessment As Precursor Of Good Governance

By Ogbu KOSY 

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 NEEDS assessment is a process for determining the needs between current 
and desired outcomes. When used properly, this assessment provides 
valuable insight into your team's processes and highlights areas for efficiency 
improvements (Asana, 2022).

One of the major proponents of the above subject, Sir Denis Utang, in a recent chat with Ogbu KOSY of The Beagle News, enunciated that Needs Assessment is an indispensable asset in the threshold of any administration with a vision for good governance.

Good governance, at various levels within the Nigerian context, is measured by the amount of physical infrastructure built by those in authority. Such infrastructure includes electricity, roads, schools, health care facilities, bridges and many other highfalutin projects. It does not matter whether such projects have direct bearing on the needs of the masses.

This probably expounds why some government officials will erect bus-stops at areas vehicles hardly ply or where no road exists. This also forms the basis of justification for some political leaders to litter buildings every five kilometres in the name of health centres, even where there are palpable evidences to lack of lack of personnel, drugs and needed facilities for the effective day-to-day operations of the health centres.

Some will brazenly construct pedestrian bridges in a less crowded vehicular routes, and may justify such actions on projected population growth and other attendant socio-economic outcomes. We can go on and on enlisting what politicians in leadership positions do to impress their individual pockets and conscience at the detriment of generality of the masses.

Hardly can society measure the success of governance based on the number of policies put in place to woo investments, which in the long run could create employment, economic prosperity and other numerous contributions to the well-being of the people.

Again, this explains why heads of government who spend time carrying out needs assessment in the first years of their administration are deemed as failing the masses.

In Cross River State, for example, Liyel Imoke witnessed such Moke unfounded judgement by the gullible public during his first year in office. He spent time conducting needs assessment of various communities, hamlets and urban areas as a guide towards providing each area with the basic amenities that attend to critical needs of the people.

Ironically, it was from those assessments that the administration knew those who needed portable pipe borne water more than roads. He was also able to ascertain how rural roads can be provided, spread, and how there can impact on the macro-economics of the state through easy transportation of agricultural products from the rural to urban areas and other available markets. Same goes for electricity, etc.

With the last eight years characterised by highfalutin projects with little or no impact on the people, it would be gratifying to see the present administration return to the drawing board of bridging the yawning gap between the government and the governed by impacting on the people with policies, programmes and projects through the instrumentality of needs assessment.

Cross River cannot continue to waste its lean resources on binge-eating projects and programmes that are selfishly targeted at swelling the already fat pockets of politicians at the detriment of the masses who wallow in abject poverty and lack of basics social services.

Perhaps, the policy that Governor Bassey Otu may need to implement speedily is on payment of gratuities to retirees, most of whom are now sick and frail. Call it needs of retirees, if you like. It is common knowledge that Cross River State is owing gratuities to retirees from 2014 to date. 

It may not require a law of the House of Assembly, but an executive order or proclamation for a table be prepared for payment of retirees, most of whom are now sick and frail. In the present situation of poor health, mental recession and financial incapabilities of majority of retirees, they can no longer be insulated from the status of the down trodden. Such executive directive should be tipped to begin with the oldest batch of retirees, then zero unto the most recent ones.

There are frameworks for pregnant women and children from zero to five years old, identified poor households, just as the Ministry of Women Affairs has a policy that impacts on the socio-economic well-being of the widows and orphans.

It will therefore not be out of place for governor Otu, whose policies, barely one month on the saddle of governance, have been described as 'landing on the right footing,' to apply his creative funding prowess on the elder statesmen and women who have laboured and toiled for 35 years in the service of the state.

Even though the state is passing through under the present economic realities, with heavy inherited debts profile, the retirees cannot be distanced from the widows and orphans, whose cry can attract God's anger. An institutional policy on how they can be paid is not only imperative, if put in place, it would be an eloquent confirmation of love and care for the down trodden.

The issues of an urgent rejig to the State civil service through promotion of stagnated staff and employment of personnel to fill in the depleted service are all public outcries that the present administration must be concerned about.

With all said, Governor Otu must tilt towards needs assessment as a fitting precursor of good governance.