By; Onyekachi C. Ugwu
In his electrifying presentation at the main auditorium of Godfrey Okoye University Enugu, venue of his Manifesto presentation, the Enugu State PDP Governorship candidate Barr Peter Ndubuisi Mbah, harped on Integrated Rural Development as one of the pivots of his administration's development agenda.
Integrated Rural Development, as a concept for planning tries to re-emphasize the need for a comprehensive approach to rural development. The need for such a rethinking is caused by the need to leverage on the achievements of the present administration which by and large had set a broad based development process in motion. The present administration has adopted ambitious strategies based on economic cause-effect relationships which benefited all and sundry with or without access to means of production without marginalizing the rural masses.
However, as a shift in paradigm, the Integrated rural development envisioned by Barr Mbah is such that will give particular emphasis to the involvement of the less privileged strata through an appropriate design of development programmes. One of the critical elements is to assure a greater participation in planning and implementation through the establishment of peoples organizations and a functional decentralization of decision-making. This is more conducive to mobilizing people's initiative and providing a better system to take into account the needs of the various social groups, as well as the links between them.
One may be tempted to ask, what is important about integrated rural development?The complementarities among health, education, basic infrastructure, and agriculture provide the rationale for Integrated Rural Development projects' multi-sectoral efforts. Integration in order to capture complementarities can, in some cases, lead to positive interactions that allow the integrated units to produce more efficiently. The efficiency in production has its overall impact on wealth creation in the rural areas and a quantum leap for the state in it's economic growth and impact on the per Capita income of its citizens.
Highlighting the key issues in integrated rural development, Peter Mbah talked about Land reform, development of human resources, measures for poverty alleviation, education, establishing cottage and light goods industries and development of infrastructures such as health facilities, roads and of course schools.
