Curbing Rural–Urban Migration Through the Community and Social Development Project

Introduction

Rural-urban migration is prevalence in countries where there is a total neglect or lack of infrastructural development in rural areas.

Some key concepts ought to be understood and defined in the right perspective of this discuss i.e. rural, urban, migration, rural-urban migration and infrastructure.

1. Rural can be defined to mean countryside with less social amenities and with less population i.e. village level.
2. Urban relates to a town or city having several means of making life more comfortable for the people especially availability of social amenities that often attract people to such places.
3. Migration is the movement from one habitat to another for the purpose of settling in a new area in order to find work.
4. Rural-urban migration is the movement of people from countryside or villages to towns or cities purposely because of economic reasons. Rural-urban migration is a reaction to some of the prevailing conditions in the rural areas.
5. Infrastructure is the basic physical goods and services provided by the government and some individuals which aid economic and social activities in a country. Infrastructure is oftentimes called social amenities which include electricity, good roads, good schools, well equipped hospitals, pipe borne water, etc.

Several reasons have been advanced why people prefer to migrate from the rural settings to urban centers.

Economists and sociologists will group these reasons into two, namely: push and pull factors. The push factors are those conditions in the rural areas that compel people to leave, while pull factors are those things in the towns or cities that attract people from rural areas.

Let us take a cursory look at both push and pull factors that help to encourage rural-urban migration which include the following:

1. Absence of social amenities such as good roads, electricity, potable water, hospitals and schools could encourage rural-urban migration. Equally, if there are no availability of recreational facilities in the rural areas it could trigger rural-urban migration. These creational facilities will include, hotels, cinema houses, parks, etc.
2. Employment opportunities are not always available in the rural areas. The need for white collar jobs which are readily available in the urban areas compel many to move to urban areas from rural areas. Availability of education often paves way for millions of Nigerian youths to move to urban areas. Finally, there is more business activities in the urban areas. This has helped to increase the high number of people leaving the rural areas to urban centres.

Unfortunately rural-urban migration has impacted negatively on the welfare, growth and development of Nigeria and most African countries. It has brought about high crime rate especially at the urban level. Many persons that have moved from the rural areas in search of jobs in the urban areas, get there disappointed – no job to do. They now resort to crimes and criminality. Our towns and cities have become highly crowded, and this has led to social unrest, shortage of accommodation, neglect of agriculture, galloping inflation and population explosion in the urban areas. This has led to over-stretching of the available social capital.

With the above challenges associated with rural-urban migration especially in our country there is an urgent need to find solutions to these problems mentioned above.

One of the ways to curb the effect of rural –urban migration is to provide social amenities in the rural areas. This will go a long way to reduce human movement from villages to cities. The impact of community and social development project in this perspective is enormous.

Community and Social Development Project (CSDP)

CSDP is assisted by the World Bank and co-financed by the Federal government and the participating states in Nigeria. CDSP employs a Community Driven Development (CDD) that effectively target social and natural resource infrastructure services at the community level. The overall objective of the CSDP is to increase access by the poor people and vulnerable people to improved social and natural resource infrastructure services in a sustainable manner throughout Nigeria.

Community participation in project identification, design, implementation and monitoring in a core aspect of CSDP which empowers the community to be in charge of their human and capital development thereby building the capacity of rural communities.

CSDP has 8 sectoral areas of intervention;

1. Education: Construction and rehabilitation of primary and secondary schools, dormitory blocks and classrooms, staff quarters, laboratories, etc., thereby improving access to quality education, employment potential, and consequently alleviating poverty.
2. Health: Construction of primary health care facilities and equipment, etc., which are usually unobtainable to improve basic health care service delivery and wellbeing of deprived rural dwellers.
3. Rural Electrification: Installation of transformers, connection to national power grid, provision/installation of street light, etc., to boost economic activities and improving security of rural communities.
4. Water: Drilling of boreholes, provision of potable water facilities, etc., to give communities clean water and reduce water borne diseases.
5. Transportation: Construction of rural feeder and access roads, bridges, and provision of water transportation facilities, etc., to enhance transportation networks, human and goods movement, and opening up the community to business activities.
6. Socio-Economic: Construction of market stalls, shops, vocational training centres, and multipurpose community infrastructure, etc., to boost socio economic activities in the rural areas, self-reliance through employment creation, and overall income level.
7. Environment/Natural Resource: Amelioration of environmental degradation processes such as erosion/desertification control, agroforestry, drainage systems, etc., and sustainable management of natural resources to enhance income of rural people.
8. Gender and Vulnerable Group (GVG): Mainstreaming gender and vulnerable into the development agenda of communities to empower women and promote gender equality while ensuring social inclusiveness, providing a social safety net.

Conclusion

The aforementioned sectors of the CSDP has undoubtedly reduced the need for rural-urban migration, to a large extent it has impacted grassroots communities as they now have access to basic amenities, the absence of which drives them to the cities for greener pastures. Therefore, adequate provision of social facilities through projects like a Community and Social Development Project (CSDP) would address the problems associated with rural-urban migration.

– Oladipo Makakese Bayode,
Operations Manager, Kogi State Community and Social Development Agency (CDSA).