Environmental planning,administration and management in Nigerian Cities: The example of Benin City,Bendel State

Third World cities are characterized by weak administrative and managerial capacity for environmental planning. Benin City, Nigeria, is no exception. Benin's environmental problems result largely from its unplanned land use and weak development control. These problems include lack of open space, substandard housing and an increasing volume of refuse. The administrative arrangements to handle environmental problems include the Town Planning Division, which enforces building and housing codes and land use regulations; and the Task Force on Environmental Sanitation, responsible for solid waste management. However, these arrangements have not produced satisfactory results. Failure has been due partly to the ad hoc organization of environmental administration; the overlapping perception of environmental problems; the alienation of the public; dispersal of authority; and the scale of jurisdictional units. Effective environmental planning administration must adopt a holistic approach, which recognizes the need for a comprehensive environmental planning and a concentration of environmental authority. This is based on the premise that environmental issues are the responsibility of one agency but an obligation for all. Structurally, the concentration of environmental authority hinges on the principle of cooperative leadership by the Federal Government. This calls urgently for the establishment of a Federal Environmental Protection Agency at the centre, and Environmental Management Boards at state levels. The Boards would provide an administrative umbrella under which the management of various aspects of the environment are coordinated. In order to maximize the cooperation of the public, the traditional power structure of the Oba (paramount chiefs and community leaders) must be involved in the conception and implementation of environmental planning. Citizen participation would in turn be maximized if the neighbourhood is adopted as the jurisdictional unit, upon which environmental administration and management are systematically built.     

State and Democratization in Nigeria

The articles interrogates the relationship between democratization and people power in Nigeria. It argues that the broadening of the Nigerian public sphere has not led to reciprocal development of democratic principles and practice. As civilian rule reigns and economic growth is reported, Nigeria’s democratization is fraught with many challenges. Democratization remains questionable in Nigeria; it is rudimentary and distorted by irregularities. These have had implications for national development and human securities as the poverty level worsens and acclaimed economic growth and “democratic dividends” fail to enhance Nigerians’ quality of life. The trivialization of democratization raises critical questions about its state and relevance to Nigerians and the Nigerian state. Is Nigeria democratizing or de-democratizing? How does the democratization process bring the Nigerian people closer to state (power)? How has it helped their developmental quests? The article contends that Nigeria’s democratization process is indeed on trial. As Ake argues, Nigerian state democratization does not only trivialize the essence of democracy—it also continues to reverse the democratization process. Against this background, the article concludes that the democratization process in Nigeria requires elite political will and people’s consciousness to advance to the next stage for better democratic consolidated and economic development relevant to Nigerians.     

Social development,community development and participation

Unlike social development, community development could not be achieved without participation. Participation is participating in decision making, to choose a community project, plan it, implement it, manage it, monitor it and control it. People can make a contribution to the planning process at the implementation stage, only if they are presented with a well articulated and feasible framework of approaches, objectives, alternative, etc. The paper focuses on the definition of social development, community development and participation in order to elaborate them. Main question of this article is： Participation is a vehicle to achieve development that community members can be involved directly in development process. This is theoretical research that method of data collection is document method.     

Constitutional Dimensions of State and Local Tax Deductibility

President Reagan's proposal to eliminate the deduction of stateand local taxes for the purpose of assessing federal incometaxes will vastly enlarge the scope of the federal government,unduly burden state and local governments, and greatly harmthe federal system. The essence of the federal idea is thatthere are arenas of government that must not be invaded by othergovernments. Yet the Treasury Department would have us believethat the most fundamental activities of state and local governmentsare in some significant sense paid for by the federal governmentthrough "subsidies" provided by the federal tax code.     

Rural development projects in LDCs: Appraisal,participation and sustainability

Evidence on the performance of development projects shows that sustainability is seldom achieved. Project sustainability is influenced by ecological, social, political and economic systems. However, the blueprint approach to project choice tends to incorporate sustainability into the project cycle by considering only economic and environmental systems. This is done by adopting elaborate methodologies such as expanded CBA and EIA. This approach is unlikely to lead to sustainable projects. The ‘participation approach’ is more sensitive to the social and political systems than the blueprint approach. It involves people in decision-making and sees the achievement of sustainable projects as the result of people's empowerment and self-reliance. However, under certain circumstances, this approach can lead to environmentally unsustainable projects. Smaller scale projects tend to bring about sustainability, but government control might be needed to ensure this. Social obstacles exist in implementing participation but occur for top-down projects as well. Problems exist in combining the bottom-up and top-down approaches.     

Fishing,food, and harbor community development in Massachusetts

Fishing communities are highly dependent on fishing and maritime economies. Regulations and techniques attempt to control quotas, types of fish caught, and the gear utilized in the industry. Furthermore, societal preferences and markets dictate the value of the fish transacted. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship and recent changes between fishing and community development in two fishing communities in Massachusetts: Gloucester and New Bedford. Moreover, I also discuss the role that fish food plays in cities and their foodways. The research asks how these communities have adapted to changes in fishing stocks, techniques, socioeconomic trends and regulations during the last two decades. A resilience public affairs approach centered on seven governance dimensions of fisheries is utilized to analyze the case studies. It is argued that specializing in niche markets, developing adequate industry facilities, and nurturing the cultural aspects endemic to each fishing community has positively influenced the communities' capacity to withstand major societal transformations. The harbor plans for Gloucester and New Bedford provide some plausible directions toward future improvements in the fishing sector.     

Information transfer implications of development research administration in Nigeria

The study of research utilization and administration has been a growing field, but the emphasis in this field has been on industrialized countries. This article presents the results of a pioneering study of the use of research by senior officials in the Nigerian Federal Government. The article focuses first on Federal Government-sponsored research, it reviews how such research was initiated and conducted, how results were presented and what affected the use of the results. The article then describes expatriate-sponsored research, casts light on the conventional assumption about the amount of such research and points to the fact that there was comparatively less awareness of the results. The article not only provides significant information about the administration of research in Nigeria but emphasizes the need to give attention to this aspect of administration.     

Failures,downsizings, and mergers among community development corporations

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, community development corporations (CDCs) have become increasingly important actors in low‐ and moderate‐income communities. One prominent view of CDCs is that they have experienced uninterrupted growth since the 1970s. Despite their growth and productivity, however, many are facing serious challenges to their continued viability. When confronted by such challenges, CDCs are likely to respond in one of three ways: go out of business, downsize, or merge with one or more other groups. The major goal of this research was to assess the causes of these failures, downsizings, and mergers.

First, we found that these changes do not appear to be isolated instances; rather, they are prevalent across the country. Second, we identified a number of contextual and organizational factors leading to CDC failures, downsizings, and mergers. Finally we suggest a series of actions CDCs, support communities, and policy makers can take in response.     

Political marketing in Pakistan: exaggerated promises,delusive claims,marketable development projects and change advocacy

The present study discusses the intricacies of the political landscape in Pakistan and its compatibility with the modern political marketing theory. The election campaigns of the three largest political parties Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, Pakistan People's Party, and Pakistan Tehreek‐e‐Insaf in the general elections 2013 were critically analyzed in the print media to comprehend the political marketing trends in Pakistan. It was found out that that the three parties largely employed mutually exclusive strategies in order to garner the support of the electorate. The success ratio of the political parties in the general elections 2013 signifies the importance of certain advertising appeals, advertising themes, and aggressively attacking the opponents. The study also questioned the veracity of the exaggerated and delusive claims made in the advertisements. The findings have implications not only for future electioneering in Pakistan, but also other countries with similar demographics and socioeconomic setups. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Administration of pastoral development: lessons from three projects in Africa

Administrative problems are a major cause of the poor performance of pastoral development projects in Africa. This study focused on two aspects of project administration: policy development and organizational structure. From the literature, 11 actions in these 2 areas were identified that were supposed to enhance project performance. These 11 propositions were tested against evidence from 3 pastoral development projects in Africa funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Eight of these actions were strongly associated with improved project performance. These results become the basis for guidelines to improve design and implementation. © 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Managing public commercial enterprises in Nigeria: The case of Kwara State commercial parastatals

Employing the usual profit criterion to evaluate performance of the commercial parastatals in Nigeria, as revealed in the case of Kwara State, the enterprises are a failure. The differences in the management of the parastatals and similar but private enterprises may have accounted for differences in performance. Among the features of management of the parastatals are the role of government in the appointment of chief executives without necessary regard to merit; the relatively poor conditions of service as obtained in the civil service; and the huge debts owed the parastatals by governments. To improve performance, the following measures should be adopted. There is need to remove commercial parastatals from the civil service to attract quality management staff while government control should be substantially relaxed. Improved funding should be guaranteed through the financial houses while government should settle their debts to the organizations. The issue of privatization is worth proper consideration with a view to selling the companies to the private sector.     

The myth of social capital in community development

Abstract

This article argues that contemporary interest in social capital by community development theorists, funders, and practitioners is misguided and needs to be thoroughly rethought. It argues that social capital, as understood by Robert Putnam and people influenced by his work, is a fundamentally flawed concept because it fails to understand issues of power in the production of communities and because it is divorced from economic capital. Therefore, community development practice based on this understanding of social capital is, and will continue to be, similarly flawed.

The article further argues that instead of Putnam's understanding of social capital, community development practice would be better served by returning to the way the concept was used by Glenn Loury and Pierre Bourdieu and concludes with a discussion of how these alternative theories of social capital can be realized in community development practice.     

State intervention and agrarian class formation: Dimensions of the access problem in the Kosi Development Region of NE Bihar,India

The theme of this paper is that access has to be discussed along a number of dimensions simultaneously, and that the language of discussion must discard the ‘David and Goliath’ metaphor of the individual versus the large organization. Access is a relationship which occurs systematically, not by chance. Its structural forms are determined by the formation and dissolution of social classes. Although access is more about power than rationality, to be examined more by reference to class struggle than culture, certain groups and classes are structurally unable through both processes to connect with alien criteria of resource allocation. At the same time the development of the bourgeois state and the transformation of rich peasants into rural capitalists cannot be completed without the incorporation of petty owners, tenants and labourers for the appropriation of their surplus value. This is maintained through the ideology of inclusion (populism) which presents access as an opportunity rather than a problem, and operates through the language of community, target groups, special programmes, extension and decentralization. The discussion in this paper is pursued in the context of material collected during fieldwork in the north-east of Bihar State, India where land reform, irrigation and intensive agricultural programmes have been undertaken since the early sixties.     

The participatory principle in development projects: the costs and benefits of cooperation

Many development theorists and practitioners, including those in key agencies like the World Bank and UNDP, now see participation as critical to successful project implementation, and strongly support cooperative organizational systems. This article cautions against undue optimism about such forms of organization, and attempts to explain their limited success when they compete with private firms by applying rational choice theory to behaviour in cooperative systems. It examines the relevance of assumptions of self interest, opportunism and bounded rationality in such solidaristic organizations, then uses them to calculate the costs and benefits of using participatory systems. It shows that these costs are likely to outweigh the benefits in large organizations unless participatory processes are effectively associated with managerial autonomy, appropriate incentives, sanctions and hierarchies. © 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.