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 if elected as Governor
Rural development has been defined by the World Bank as “a strategy designed to improve the economic and social life of a specific group the rural poor” whereas the United Nations Committee, captures it as “a strategy designed to transform the rural life by extending to the masses of the rural population the benefits of economic and social progress, stressing a fundamental principle; that the rural poor must share fully in this development process through equitable access to resources inputs and services and participation’ in the design and implementation of development programmes.
The PDP Enugu State Governorship candidate thus in his Integrated rural development agenda, see holds that the meaningful development of rural people must be on a self sustaining basis, through transforming the socio-spatial structure of their productive activities which implies a broad based re-organization and mobilization of the rural masses so as to enhance their capacity to cope effectively with the daily tasks of their lives and with the changes.
It is on the strength of such thinking that Professor Ukwu held that "integrated rural development has to do with putting the entire act together, with clarifying and unifying the objectives and bringing together all the agencies, facilities and programmes necessary to attain the objectives”. According to Peter Mbah, "the need for rethinking integrated rural development as solution to urban - rural gaps 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". It bears restating that the present administration has adopted ambitious strategies for rural development 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 more 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 as to form a cardinal thrust in the man development agenda of Barr Mbah.
In clear terms, 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 even a quantum leap for the state in it's economic growth and impact on the per Capita income of its citizens hence it has to be aggressively pursued.
Highlighting the key issues in integrated rural development, Peter Mbah talked about a commitment to changing the way agriculture and agrobusiness is done. In this he was emphatic on productivity enhancing farm machinery sharing platform through mobile platforms, E- Wallet system to make high yielding, disease resistant and drought tolerant seeds and fertilisers available to the farmers, technology enabled extension services, and agric product value chain development. Looked at from every angle, these are practicable approaches to enhancing agricultural productivity in our rural communities which correspondingly enables employment opportunities and growth in rural economy and in overall give traction to increase in the state GDP and ultimately achieving zero hunger in Enugu State.
As part of creating enabling environment for broad based agricultural investment, the manifesto captured Land reform with targeted interest in lifting the veil of cultural limitations on access to land, unbundling land ownership and by so doing making available more land space for farming activities, especially taking cognisance of the fact that only an infinitesimal land space is currently utilized for agriculture while the rest lie fallow and untapped.
In the manifesto, Peter Mbah also discussed his commitment to creating road access across all local government areas, thus linking the vast population of our local communities to their various quasi-urban centres. These link roads will capacitate the transportation of agricultural products from local areas to the area where they are much needed.
It is concluded that Peter Mbah's integrated rural development approach is the best Enugu People and indeed the nation needs as panacea to increasing poverty.
