Nigeria since Independence on October 1st 1960, has undergone various phases of National Development as a strategy towards meeting up to prevailing needs like the National Development Plan, Green Revolution/Operation Feed The Nation, War Against Indiscipline and Corruption (WAIC), Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), Privatization, Poverty Alleviation Programme/National Poverty Eradication Program (NAPEP), Millennium Development Goal (MDGs)/ Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs), the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SUR-P), Niger Delta Amnesty program, and many others which were developed by successive Federal Governments or implemented as a result of influence from Global Policy actors. Also, some of the interventions of Government are driven by the need to respond to emergency challenges or a response to immediate concerns of its citizens like dealing with violent conflicts, epidemics, natural disasters and many others.
The 20th July 2014 Ebola outbreak in Nigeria and consequent activities that followed its eradication as posited by World Health Organization has drawn the attention of both local and global spectators into understanding the reasons behind the world’s acclaimed success. Such global attention made some public pundits within the country to feel that it’s quite impressive that for the first time, Nigeria was taking the position of being a role model to the world. Remarkably, within the period of the outbreak, there were many interventions including stakeholder collaboration. People were amazed by the way and manner the outbreak was handled being one of such ad-hoc roles performed by the government in responding to health related development needs of its citizens. The response broke the routine politicalization of previous similar health interventions and lackadaisical attitudes of state and non state actors involving government, media, religious organizations, managers of schools, and many others. Such collaboration led to early release of funds, effective house to house and media hygiene campaign, successful tracing of all index victims and those they had physical contact with for cordoning from densely populated cities like Lagos and Port Harcourt in Nigeria. The success triggered the need for expert evaluation to identify best practices in the area of managing Ebola outbreak.
The successful response to the likely epidemic which could have been caused by the virus has brought to relevance a perspective in measuring the success of projects especially within the context of the Nigeria society. Some scholars and public policy analysts have seen the eradication of the ebola virus as the only successful project that has ever been undertaken in the country while those who have extreme ideas of development still do not see it with any iota of excellence as they feel that sustainability plan was not made by the intervening bodies or even research institutions in other to look for a more formidable response to the disease rather than developing strategies to just respond to outbreaks. It’s important we bring to this context that, there are certain contexts that projects which try to focus on end beneficiary impact. This implies that success of a project can be ascertained based on the impact triggered as a result of the engagement and since such a position may be valid, saying that the ebola response was a great success is never out of place because the goal of the response intervention was met as there was satisfaction by target
Dwelling on the already established fact that the ebola project was a success, one can conveniently say that, it’s the only successful project that has ever been achieved in Nigeria despite the many projects and development plants that have been developed as stated in the introductory part of this essay. Again, to add strength to the position that the project was a success, even for those who see successful project from the position of carrying people along in implementation, the ebola project as stated in this paper, got everyone on board with just one goal ‘’chasing ebola out of Nigeria’’ Almost all stakeholders and technically, all citizens were carried along or got themselves involved because everyone realized their potential of being victims. Also, its critical to note that projects embarked in the country were not concluded as they are either scuttled by successive governments or forcefully acclaimed to be successful by the initiating government or dismantled/redesigned by any successive government. This limited the chances of project completion. Again, it can’t be out of place to say that the project was the only successful project because this is the only project that has been seen to represent all citizens thereby eluded of the normal rancour that have historically affected most interventions. The northern southern dichotomy wasn’t invoked either by the citizens who are always the under-dogs in this politics of identity or the stakeholders who are mostly community gatekeepers who instigate such politics of identity.
In conclusion, it’s important that the present and future governments learn from the successes of the ebola project. Also, representatives of the public must emphasize that projects resolve general problems/challenges rather than parochial interests that have characterised previous interventions. Again, there should be the de-pollicisation of policies and projects among members of the public and other critical stakeholders for stronger public action.
Lastly, there should always be timeline added in project design in other to mange success or failure at the end of the project.
– Arc Isaac Kayode Obajemu
Email: ikobaj@gmail.com.
