This study was aimed at finding out the level of awareness of the citizens or community members, of the importance of participating in community development processes, and also to assess the level of involvement of the citizens in the decision making and developmental processes of activities that concerns them. In order to achieve the purposes intended, two research questions were raised. A review of some related literature on participation in community development project execution in particular and community development in general was carried out, and the instrument used for data collection was a two section structured questionnaire, for which a reliability coefficient of 0.59 was obtained using Pearson’s correlation formula. A total of 315 respondents comprising adults, resident in 9 different communities within Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State were randomly sampled for the study. However analysis of results was based on responses from 283 respondents constituting the correctly completed and returned questionnaire. The collected data were analysed using frequency counts, and simple percentages. Result from the study showed that a very large percentage of the citizens are still very ignorant of the importance of their roles in community development processes; none involvement of community members in deciding what their felt-needs are and in identifying the projects that could be executed to meet those felt-needs is a major setback to community development processes. Also community development association executives are largely ignorant of their roles in community development processes and that the level of participation in community development processes of the “ordinary” community members who form the bulk of the citizens is abysmally low or even non-existent. The paper made recommendations which include the need for the empowerment of community members to initiate and control their own improvement, even when external assistance is available.
Year Of Publication
Volume
Page Range
120-128
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