Adebayo Adenrele
The Senior Program Officer, Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD-West Africa), Austin Aigbe, has enjoined the Civil Society Organisations in Ekiti State to focus less huge budget to run their projects.
Aigbe disclosed this at the reflection meeting of post Ekiti/Osun Elections in Ado Ekiti, to ascertain the effectiveness of fact checking during the elections.
Aigbe noted that conferring a huge money on one individual is a herculean task adding that, its disbursal among notable individuals makes it easier to gather the fund on time.
In his words, “Don’t always look for the biggest of the money, don’t look for 5 thousand dollars because the process to get it is more than to get ten thousand dollars.”
“If you ask someone to support you in your project for 5 thousand dollars, the person would not give you and it would take time before you get the money from another.”
“But, if you target 10 people for the 10 thousand dollars, charge them each with 1 thousand, you would be surprised that you will get the money within a shortest period of time.” He said
On his part, the Chairperson of Coalition of CSO in Ekiti, Professor Christopher Oluwadare commended CDD for their zealous innovation, by employing members of the Civil Societies from all the sixteen local governments in the state.
“I really want to commend you for the training. You cut across all the 16 local governments in the State and you chose nothing less than 9 people in each local government to participate in the training. The innovation CDD brought in was greater than others, because you only recruited from civil societies but, others recruited just anybody irrespective of skills, passion.”
“Through those people who participated, we have expanded our own reach, our connection to the community because of the strategy brought into place, it’s very unique.”
Speaking on how to improve the Organisation, Timothy Idowu, the General Secretary of Coalition of CSO in Ekiti, advised CDD to have a refresher training in order to establish strong bond among all members.
He equally encouraged them to progress their engagements with CSOs because the State has never experienced such collaboration from time immemorial.
