CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1   Background to the Study

Public policies in Africa have been formulated and implemented over the years with the help of international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Some have also been formulated single handedly by African political leaders aimed at achieving radical and rapid improvement in the conditions of life after many years of colonial rule (Ozumba, 2014). However, most of these policies are beclouded with politics and implementation bottlenecks. The politicization of public policies in Africa has led to the formulation of overambitious programme by political parties to win political capital coupled with excessive bureaucratic procedures.

Nigeria has been an independent nation for the past 54 years with different policies on development of rural communities, but rural areas are still not developed and the quality of life of people in the rural areas continues to deteriorate throughout all tiers of government of both politicians and the military regimes.

Community dwellers in Nigeria are dominantly peasant farmers, petty traders, middle men or commission agents. The country has the potentials to develop all sectors of human endeavour more especially if public policies are fully implemented in the rural communities throughout the country. The rural communities in Nigeria are the majority in terms of population yet, their neglect and sufferings point to the failure of public policy implementation.

The need to bring rural communities to mainstream of contributing meaningfully to the social, cultural and economic development of Nigeria requires an overwhelming priority to be accorded to its policy implementation. As Larson (cites in Alinno et al, 2012) posits that a policy or programme is a way of dealing with public problems, a sort of concrete socio-economic action or a response to weakness and inability of private sector to supply necessary goods and services or a response to a missing link within the norms of the society. It gives direction to action and activities. In order words, policy refers to a verbal, written or implied overall guide setting up boundaries that supply the general units’ direction in which administrative or managerial action will take.

There is an urgent demand to strengthen and encourage effective and adequate implementation of policies for community development programmes. This will help to stem the challenges of community development which have been of great concern to the different tiers of government in Nigeria -urban migration. The focus of various policies of rural development programme in Nigeria is meant to improve the living conditions in the rural areas with a view to curbing the streaming rural-urban migration.

Despite the countless number of rural development policies introduced at different times by successive governments coupled with the huge financial and material resources employed, little or nothing is felt at the rural level as each policy has often died with the government that initiated it before it starts to yield dividends for the rural dwellers. Onuorah (1996) supports this claim when he states that not minding the lofty objectives of these policies, government’s efforts and initiatives never endured beyond the government that initiated the schemes.

The importance of community development in contemporary Nigerian society cannot be overemphasized, as much as it cannot be relegated to the background; its significance stems from the recognition of the roles it plays in achieving the improvement of economic, political, social and cultural conditions of the communities. As a strategy, community development ensures rapid national development hence Ugwu’s (2009:4) posited:

 “community development is one of the major planks upon which National developmental policies and their implementation are hinged”.

Hence, this research work seeks to explore the effect of public policy implementation on community development in Nigeria, with a special reference to primary health care system in Ojo Local Government Area (LGA) of Lagos State.