KUBI Etienne NTUM
Njinikom Council
Career path: SG
Assignment: Study the strategic development plans of your various CTDs and make a critical evaluation to determine whether they are achieving their objectives or not and why.
Njinikom Council updated the Council Development plan in 2017 and launched it March 2018. The objective of the CDP was to create a common formula to enhance development in the Municipality. Considering all the needs expressed in the social, economic, environmental, cultural etc domains, it was estimated that to fully implement this plan would cost about 17 billion FCFA. To make the cumbersome task easier, the Council formulated a three – angle approach to better present and execute this development plan:
A. Council Institutional Diagnosis, this was to check the functioning of the Council itself because you cannot expect miraculous performance from a Council which is not firm in terms of personnel, management, finances etc. in this domain some recruitments were recommended and done, some material lapses were equally noticed and efforts were made to mitigate them and some are still going on.
B. Urban Space Diagnosis, this was the strategic plan to transform the immediate Njinikom town and its surroundings to a modern El Dorado. With this initiative, proper town planning was to be enforced, construct modern market sheds to curb roadside occupation by vendors, light up the streets, construct low cost houses, rehabilitate and tarr major roads in the town and supply water to Njinikom town.
C. PARTICIPATORY village diagnosis, Njinikom Council counts 19 villages and all these villages were consulted in an open meeting where everyone was allowed to propose solutions to problems faced by the village. Emphasis was laid on the SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS. Each village gave their projects according to priority to them. To this effect, the Council always projects some 08 priority projects per village in the council annual budget which falls under the Midterm Expenditure Framework. Generally speaking, all these villages have received projects attention as a result of this initiative. Classrooms have been built, roads rehabilitated, water supply stepped up, lighting of some streets and villages, supply of farming materials to CIGs, assistance to the vulnerable, mater assistance to the elderly, construction health centers, supply of medical equipment to health centers etc.
Shortcomings of the implementation of the CDP.
1. Insufficient funding. Most of the projects in the CDP have not been done due to insufficient finances as the council has merely been surviving from state allocations.
2. Socio-political atmosphere. At the launch of the CDP, there were mild signs of a crisis, suddenly it degenerated into an armed conflict and has dragged on till this moment of report, March 2025. This has seriously dealt a fatal blow to full implementation of the CDP since some donors can’t access the field and insist that nobody can monitor their projects on their behalf.
3. The vision of the council has not been attained. Not every village has basic necessities as projected in the CDP.