Public Participation in Road Infrastructure Provision in Abeokuta, Nigeria

Road infrastructure is a key determinant of urban mobility, communication, economic performance and spatial organisation in any nation. Its provision statutorily as government's responsibility has been challenged by economic recession, multiple responsibilities and technical breaches. To this end, the public have had to intervene in providing couple of interventions to meeting their needs. This study therefore, seeks to evaluate public participation in road infrastructure provision in Abeokuta, Nigeria with a view to suggest strategies to improve the economy and spatial organisation of the city. Information was elicited from 375 systematically selected stakeholders (CDA members, traditional leaders, government officials and key informants) who had direct involvement across road project phases. Observed data were subjected to descriptive statistics, including frequencies, percentages and cross-tabulations, while Spearman Rank Correlation analysis was used to examine relationships among the study variables. Findings reveal that majority of the stakeholders were youths (47.2%). Others were older men (23.5%), women (22.1%) and government officials (0.8%) who are engaged in planning and design (66.1%), construction activities (65.3%), site selection (63.2%), needs identification (62.7%) and monitoring and evaluation (45.3%). The contribution of the stakeholders in road provision has been through finances (levies and fund raising) (34.9%), voluntary labour (skilled and unskilled) (25.1%), decision-making (20.0%), procurement of materials (14.9%) and oversight functions (5.1%). Major factors hindering the participation of public in road projects are financial constraints (77.6%), lack of trust in governance (72.8%) and political interference (67.5%). Benefits associated with public participation in road provision include: community acceptance of projects (77.6%), enhancement of livelihood sources (62.9%), timely road project delivery (53.1%) and reduced resource conflict (42.4%). The study identifies public participation in road project provision as a panacea to meeting the deficits from government efforts. It recommends the strengthening of participatory planning, capacity building for stakeholders, equitable resource mobilisation and accountability.