Community Participation In The Provision Of Infrastructural Facilities In Selected Littoraland Non-Littoral Localities Of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

This study examined the perception of communities on areas of participation during infrastructure provision process by donors/stakeholders. The study was comparatively carried out in twenty purposively selected Akwa Ibom rural communities in the littoral (coastal) rural LGAs of Ibeno and Eastern Obolo and the non-littoral (non-coastal) rural LGAs of Nsit Atai and Oruk Anam, using a multi-stage sampling technique. The designed survey instrument was administered to 953 households from twenty communities of the four LGAs. It was complemented with participatory Focus Group Discussions and field activities in the communities. Logistic regression model and Oneway analysis of variance (ANOVA) were analyzed statistically in SPSS while the spatial analysis was in a GIS environment. The result reveals the key areas that communities participated in during infrastructure provision to include need assessment, provision of labour and monitoring of projects in the littoral locality and need assessment, provision of labour and public hearing in the non-littoral locality. It also outlined the predictors of community involvement during provision process, comparatively, in the littoral (coastal) locality to include education, occupation, income and relevance of existing infrastructures and non-littoral (non-coastal) locality to include relevance of existing infrastructure and length of stay in the community. The paper recommends a concerted effort towards strengthening community participation in the development processes by infrastructure providers which is being emphasized by major international development donors.