Being part of local governance prevents lots of dangers that can come before a community that is organized. A community is a group of people living together in the same neighborhood. These groups of people have to come together in agreement and elect people who will make decisions that would help in the smooth running of the community activities.
With law in a community, the dwellers will be rest assured that they are safe and there will be peaceful coexistence. In an unorganized community like the one I found myself, the neighborhood is one where governance is nothing but a word and lawlessness reigns. Everyone lives on an island.
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Since 2022, our community has been through a transformer issue. One of the most important infrastructures that aid human activities in several ways. At first when it happened, everyone felt a meeting would be called for a solution but we waited for a very long time and finally that happened. Due to this that abandonment without saying it the transformer, a lot happens at night, thieves enter inside the small house constructed for the transformer to steal vital parts of the transformer.
The first gathering at the community center for the members to agree on the way forward on how to get the transformer repaired, First, the number of persons present for the meeting was discouraging, two there were no valid opinions on how to proffer solutions that would help the community have power supply again.
After the address on the issue, an agreement was reached that each compound is to bring 40,000 naira for the transformer to be repaired. The great issue with this was that not all compounds paid and to make matters worse the financial secretary of the community ate some of the contributed money.
After the whole issue with no refund of funds to those that made payments, no one talked about the money again. Everyone that paid regretted their actions and everyone was left to fend for themselves. After two years with nothing done, residents were forced to find a way of getting power supply to their homes.
The huge price to pay to get electricity made so many remain in darkness till date. For the new power source, Commission fee was 400,000 for upstairs and 300,000 for downstairs, settlement fee, 5000 naira with exorbitant monthly bills.
All these were a result of lawlessness and absence of governance. With everyone busy and refusing to see to the community's growth, the community is left adrift. The neighborhood dynamics worsen the whole issue. The lack of trust among the dwellers and every man to himself lifestyle were great hindrances to all the decisions made to address the transformer problem.
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When there is lawlessness, uncertainty sets in, everyone is in the dark of what would happen but with collective action, the dwellers would be able to get support through community mobilization. When there are no active individuals who can stand up and rally for collective action in the community by setting community meetings, and creating awareness for meetings and billing defaulters.
All effort to establish a framework for governance had been made by few persons in the community but since the community is one with business men and women, they felt since we are came to the town as strangers, there would be no point trying to build up laws in a state that is not owned by us and the lack of trust that existed among dwellers.
The above belief has done nothing good but fostered a sense of disunity and individualism. Currently while in darkness, we battle every night with thieves, trying to snatch handbags, phones and other thefts have been the constant occurrence this days, it is now a difficult thing to leave the house at night with one's cell phone or any valuable items and the community head and members are so carefree about the incident living everyone to sit and hope for a better tomorrow.