(Re-engaging) the ‘tyranny’ of process in participatory development programming in Africa: Fadama in Nigeria as a case study

ABSTRACT

Have the World Bank’s avowed inclusive strategies metamorphosed into renewed forms of ‘tyranny’ over local beneficiaries of development interventions? This article’s qualitative analysis of Fadama’s local beneficiaries’ experience reveals how rules, procedures, strategies and processes designed for results can culminate in difficulties for the intended beneficiaries, stifling social, economic and political empowerment. The research found that a form of depoliticisation was implicit within Fadama’s participatory implementation strategies and processes, which, in the view of this author, is not accidental. Participation here, as James Ferguson contends, serves an ‘anti-politics’ machinery role designed to remove politics from development planning agendas and to keep them strictly technocratic and problems-based, thus limiting beneficiaries’ possible critique, even of the project’s governance structure or broader public institutions. This article contributes to on-going discussions about enhancing meaningful participation in development planning as a prelude to improving the prospects of advancing social change.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa
• Fadama
• decoloniality
• Nigeria
• participatory development planning
• pro-poor interventions
• World Bank

Acknowledgements

This paper was presented at a joint postgraduate students’ conference on International Relations and African Affairs, hosted by the University of Johannesburg and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in December 2019, hosted by the Department of Politics and International Relations and the SARChI Chair in African Diplomacy and Foreign Policy at the University of Johannesburg. This article was developed from the author's PhD dissertation on food security and the politics of development partnerships: the case of Fadama in Nigeria. The Faculty of Humanities (School of Social Sciences) University of the Witwatersrand and UPEACE-IDRC Africa Programme (2012–2015) provided fellowships for the dissertation leading to this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Kingsley Stephen Orievulu is a Research Fellow, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He holds a PhD in Development studies from the University of the Witwatersrand.

Notes

1 B Cooke and U Kothari, eds, Participation: The New Tyranny? (London: Zed Books, 2001).

2 F Cleaver, ‘Institutions, Agency and Limitations of Participatory Approaches to Development’, in Participation: The New Tyranny?, ed. B Cooke and U Kothari (London: Zed Books, 2001), 36–55.

3 S Hickey and G Mohan, Participation – From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development (London: Zed Books, 2004).

4 F Cleaver, ‘Paradoxes of Participation: Questioning Participatory Approaches to Development’, Journal of International Development 11, no. 2 (1999): 597.

5 The term ‘interveners’ is borrowed from Meera Sabaratnam’s (2017) reference to external development actors – multilateral, bilateral and International development institutions, including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), USAID, DFID, EU, and different International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) – operating across Africa and establishing or funding initiatives designed to address poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, conflicts and other development challenges. M Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention: International State-building in Mozambique (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017).

6 G Mansuri and V Rao, ‘Community-based and -Driven Development: A Critical Review’, World Bank Research Observer 19, no. 1 (2004): 1–39; HP Binswanger-Mkhize, JP de Regt and S Spector, Local and Community Driven Development: Moving to Scale in Theory and Practice (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010).

7 D Wienecke, ‘Community-driven Development in Central Asia: A World Bank Initiative’, Critique – A Worldwide Journal of Politics (Illinois State University, 2005).

8 World Bank, Nigeria – Third National Fadama Development (Fadama III) Project (No. 39489) (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2008), 1–175.

9 World Bank, Nigeria – Second National Fadama Development Project (No. ICR1160) (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010).

10 World Bank, Nigeria – Second National Fadama Development Project.

11 In this article, terms Fadama III and Fadama are used interchangeably to emphasise that while the study focuses on stakeholders of Fadama III, it hinges on the broader Fadama intervention.

12 YM Bature, AA Sanni and FO Adebayo, ‘Analysis of Impact of National Fadama Development Projects on Beneficiaries Income and Wealth in FCT, Nigeria’, Journal of Economics and Sustainable Development 4, no. 17 (2013); E Nkonya et al, From the Ground Up: Impacts of a Pro-poor Community-driven Development Project in Nigeria (International Food Policy Research Institution, 2010); IN Nwachukwu, ‘Evaluation of Second National Fadama Development Project in Nigeria: A Rapid Policy Appraisal’, MPRA Paper No. 12914, 2008, http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/12914/.

13 G Williams, ‘Evaluating Participatory Development: Tyranny, Power and (Re)Politicisation’, Third World Quarterly 25, no. 3 (2004). This author seems to suggest a kind of obsession among critical development theorists with any concept ‘embraced’ by the World Bank (558).

14 D Moore, ed, The World Bank: Development, Poverty, Hegemony (South Africa: University of Kwa-Zulu Natal Press, 2007); P Alejandro Leal, ‘Participation: The Ascendancy of a Buzzword in the Neo-liberal Era’, Development in Practice 17, no. 4–5 (2007): 539–48; D Williams, ‘Constructing the Economic Space: World Bank and the Making of Homo Oeconomicus’, Millennium 28, no. 1 (1999): 79–99; Wienecke, ‘Community-driven Development in Central Asia’.

15 Cooke and Kothari, Participation.

16 Alejandro Leal, ‘Participation’; A Cornwall, ‘Buzzwords and Fuzzwords: Deconstructing Development Discourse’, Development in Practice 17, no. 4–5 (2007): 471–84.

17 Direct observation of meetings and workshops organised for the Fadama III project in Rivers state also provided data for this study. In Rivers state, two beneficiary categories were interviewed: early beneficiaries from a post-conflict community, who participated at the onset in 2008/2009, and the late beneficiaries, who joined Fadama III in 2011–2012. Other data sources: Official Government and World Bank documents – reports and training manuals – of Fadama; academic and policy-oriented research papers; and online and print news articles.

18 World Bank, Community-Driven Development: Delivering the Results People Need (No. 51976) (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009), 1–9; R Kagia, ed, Balancing the Development Agenda: The Transformation of World Bank under James D. Wolfensohn, 1995–2005 (No. 32596) (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005), 149. (Also see, JD Wolfensohn, ‘A Proposal for a Comprehensive Development Framework’, January 21, 1999, http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01013/WEB/IMAGES/CDF.PDF (accessed October 27, 2017).)

19 Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention.

20 A Sawyerr, The Politics of Adjustment Policy. The Human Dimension of Africa’s Persistent Economic Crisis (London: H. Zell & Economic Commission for Africa, 1990).

21 J Pender, ‘From “Structural Adjustment” to “Comprehensive Development Framework”: Conditionality Transformed?’, Third World Quarterly 22, no. 3 (2001): 397–411.

22 C Enns, B Bersaglio and T Kepe, ‘Indigenous Voices and the Making of the Post-2015 Development Agenda: The Recurring Tyranny of Participation’, Third World Quarterly 35, no. 3 (2014).

23 Mansuri and Rao, ‘Community-based and -Driven Development’; Binswanger-Mkhize, de Regt and Spector, Local and Community Driven Development.

24 R Chambers, ‘The Origins and Practice of Participatory Rural Appraisal’, World Development 22, no. 7 (1994): 953–69.

25 Williams, ‘Evaluating Participatory Development’, 557–60.

26 R Kanbur et al, World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty (No. 22684) (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000), 1–356.

27 Kanbur et al, World Development Report 2000/2001.

28 Williams, ‘Constructing the Economic Space’; see Moore, The World Bank.

29 Alejandro Leal, ‘Participation’.

30 Williams, ‘Evaluating Participatory Development’, 558–9.

31 Williams, ‘Evaluating Participatory Development’, 558–9.

32 Williams, ‘Evaluating Participatory Development’, 558–9.

33 Williams, ‘Evaluating Participatory Development’, 561–5.

34 Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention.

35 Note here that Meera Sabaratnam uses ‘targets’ to denote the people of Mozambique in discussing international intervention. See Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention.

36 Enns, Bersaglio and Kepe, ‘Indigenous Voices and the Making of the Post-2015 Development Agenda’, 358–75; Alejandro Leal, ‘Participation’; Moore, The World Bank.

37 J Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); J Fergusson and L Lohmann, ‘The Anti-Politics Machine: Development and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho’, The Ecologist 24, no. 5 (1994): 176–81.

38 AB Imrana, ‘Aid, Intervention and Neocolonial “Development” in Africa’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, doi:10.1080/17502977.2018.1470136.

39 Inspired by the works of anti-imperialist scholars W.E.B Dubois, Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral, she aimed to reconstruct African subjecthood in political analysis – from a colonial image to a decolonised one where the subordinate actors exist, endowed with a way of life, community, intellectual and political engagement. Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention.

40 Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention.

41 Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention.

42 Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention, 42.

43 Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention.

44 This entailed approaching development beyond the scope of economic growth but emphasising pro-poor, inclusive and holistic growth-focused poverty reduction strategies.

45 World Bank, Nigeria – Country Strategy Note, No. 20309 (Washington, DC, 2000); World Bank, Nigeria – Country Partnership Strategy, No. 32412 (Washington, DC, 2005).

46 World Bank, Nigeria – Country Partnership Strategy, No. 32412.

47 World Bank, Nigeria – Country Partnership Strategy, No. 32412.

48 PG Adogamhe, ‘Economic Policy Reform & Poverty Alleviation: A Critique of Nigeria’s Strategic Plan for Poverty Reduction’, Poverty & Public Policy 2, no. 4 (2010): 49–80; N Okonjo-Iweala and P Osafo-Kwaako, ‘Nigeria’s Economic Reforms: Progress and Challenges’, Brookings Global Economy and Development, Working Paper 6, 2007.

49 World Bank, Nigeria – Second National Fadama Development Project.

50 World Bank, Nigeria – Third National Development Project: Implementation Completion and Results Report (No. ICR3895) (2016), 5.

51 SS Aiyar, Sourcebook for Community Driven Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank, 2001), http://siteresources.worldbank.org.

52 World Bank, Nigeria – Third National Development Project.

53 World Bank, Nigeria – Third National Development Project.

54 World Bank, Nigeria – Third National Development Project. According to the report, it was expected that the project would reach at least 2 million indirect beneficiary households, as members of the Fadama communities not benefitting directly from subprojects, and non-Fadama communities who will gain from the investments in public infrastructure and additional income and employment effects.

55 Rivers State is one of the 36 states of Nigeria, located in the southernmost part of the country. According to the population census of 2006, it was the sixth largest state in Nigeria. Rivers state is also a major oil producing state and the hotspot of natural resource-based conflicts, central to the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the environmental activist.

56 Abua/Odual, Ahoada-East, Ahoada-West, Akuku-Toru, Andoni, Degema, Eleme, Emohua, Etche, Gokana, Ikwerre, Khana, Obio-Akpor, Ogba-Egbema-Ndoni, Ogu-gbolo, Okrika, Omuma, Oyigbo, Port Harcourt, and Tai. Non-participating LGAs include: Asari-Toru, Bonny and Opobo. The major reason for their non-participation is linked to their inability of their LGAs to pay the required participation counterpart funding fee support local/grassroots beneficiaries from these LGAs.

57 RSFCO (Rivers State Fadama Coordinating Office), Third Fadama Development Programme (FADAMA III) Rivers State (Unpublished Report) (Port Harcourt: RSFCO, 2012), 13.

58 RSFCO, Third Fadama Development Programme (FADAMA III) Rivers State.

59 Dongier et al, ‘Chapter 9: Community-Driven Development’, in World Bank Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (Washington, DC, 2003), 304

60 Kagia, Balancing the Development Agenda, 149.

61 World Bank, Community-Driven Development.

62 Cooke and Kothari, Participation, 14.

63 Cooke and Kothari, Participation, 4.

64 See S Schech and S vas Dev, ‘Governing Through Participation? The World Bank’s New Approach to the Poor’, in Moore, The World Bank.

65 Dongier et al, ‘Community-Driven Development’.

66 This refers to the initial attempt to reach out to communities to obtain their buy-in to the Fadama process. In fact, it also provided the basis for the formation of economic interest groups within communities that eventually became beneficiaries of Fadama III.

67 Personal Interview, Participant-IFAC-ERV, Port Harcourt, 23 June 2013.

68 See R Mbeche, ‘Climbing the Ladder of Participation: Symbolic or Substantial Representation in Preparing Uganda’s REDD+?’, Conservation and Society 15, no. 4 (2017): 426–38; Enns, Bersaglio and Kepe, ‘Indigenous Voices and the Making of the Post-2015 Development Agenda’.

69 One participant noted that World Bank officials visited their community to tell them about the benefits of participating in Fadama III (see Personal Interview, Participant-AWC1FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 2 February 2013).

70 Personal Interview, Participant-AWC1FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 2 February 2013; Personal Interview, Lekoo, Yeghe, 25 June 2013.

71 Personal Interview, Participant-AWC12FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 2 February 2013.

72 Personal Interview, Participant-AWC1FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 2 February 2013.

73 Personal Interview, Participant-PhD, Omanwa, 2 February 2013; Personal Interview, Lekoo, Yeghe, 25 June 2013.

74 Personal Interview, Ethlorich, Omanwa, 2 February 2013; Personal Interview, Deedum, Yeghe, 27 January, 2013; Personal Interview, Chairman, Omanwa, 2 February 2013.

75 Personal Interview, Chairman, Omanwa, 2 February 2013.

76 Personal Interview, Participant-AWC1FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 2 February 2013.

77 This refers to the UN and WB’s mainstreamed consultation processes for developing a post-2015 development agenda and the REDD+ programmes in Uganda. See Mbeche, ‘Climbing the Ladder of Participation’; Enns, Bersaglio and Kepe, ‘Indigenous Voices and the Making of the Post-2015 Development Agenda’.

78 Enns, Bersaglio and Kepe, ‘Indigenous Voices and the Making of the Post-2015 Development Agenda’, 360.

79 Mbeche, ‘Climbing the Ladder of Participation’, 426.

80 Mbeche, ‘Climbing the Ladder of Participation’, 426.

81 NFDP (National Fadama Development Programme), Third Fadama Development Project (Fadama III) handbook (Abuja, 2010), 10; Federal Republic Nigeria, Third National Fadama Development Project (Fadama III) – Volume 1: Project Implementation Manual (Manual No. 1) (Abuja: Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resource, 2009), https://fadamaaf.net/AF/res/manualsx/Project%20Implementation%20Manual.pdf.

82 Personal Interview, Participant-AWC1FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 2 February 2013.

83 Personal Interview, Participant-AWC1FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 2 February 2013.

84 Personal Interview, Participant-AWC12FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 17 July 2013.

85 Personal Interview, Participant-PhD, Omanwa, 2 February 2013; Personal Interview, Ethlorich, Omanwa, 2 February 2013.

86 Personal Interview, Lekoo, Yeghe, 25 June 2013.

87 Federal Republic Nigeria, Third National Fadama Development Project (Fadama III) – Volume 1; Federal Republic of Nigeria, Third National Fadama Development Project (Fadama III) – Asset Acquisition Manual (Manual No. 8) (Abuja: Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resource, 2009), https://www.fadamaaf.net/res/manualsx/Assest%20Aquisition%20Manual.pdf.

88 Williams, ‘Constructing the Economic Space’, in Moore, The World Bank.

89 Williams, ‘Constructing the Economic Space’, in Moore, The World Bank, 101–2.

90 See Mbeche, ‘Climbing the Ladder of Participation’; Enns, Bersaglio and Kepe, ‘Indigenous Voices and the Making of the Post-2015 Development Agenda’.

91 Williams notes in these cases the World Bank’s stance is that community groups need their capacity enhanced to ensure project sustainability, of which an indicator included the group’s ability to effectively operate, maintain, repair, collect revenue, keep records and accounts, evaluate and resolve issues. Williams, ‘Constructing the Economic Space’, in Moore, The World Bank, 111.

92 Personal Interview, TTL-WBA, Abuja, 9 November 2012.

93 NFDP (National Fadama Development Programme), Third Fadama Development Project (Fadama III) Handbook.

94 NFDP (National Fadama Development Programme), Third Fadama Development Project (Fadama III) Handbook; Federal Republic Nigeria, Third National Fadama Development Project (Fadama III) – Volume 1; Federal Republic of Nigeria, Third National Fadama Development Project (Fadama III) – Asset Acquisition.

95 Personal Interview, RM&E-FAP, Port Harcourt, 14 June 2013.

96 For some groups, especially the disadvantaged and vulnerable groups – widows, unemployed youths, the disabled and people living with HIV – beneficiary contribution was waived; they only paid in kind by showing commitment through producing evidence of preparedness to be funded. This could be by showing the availability of land for farming or existing business infrastructure.

97 Apart from (unemployed) youths and vulnerable groups, for any group to be eligible, it must have paid its beneficiary contribution into an approved Bank Account with which all their transactions will be processed.

98 Federal Republic Nigeria, Third National Fadama Development Project (Fadama III) – Volume 1; Federal Republic of Nigeria, Third National Fadama Development Project (Fadama III) – Asset Acquisition; Personal Interview, RM&E-FAP, Port Harcourt, 14 June 2013; Personal Interview, Participant-AWC12FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 17 July 2013.

99 Personal Interview, Participant-AWC1FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 2 February 2013; Personal Interview, Deedum-Yeghe, Ahai Ogbakiri, 27 January 2013.

100 Personal Interview, Deedum-Yeghe, Ahai Ogbakiri, 27 January 2013.

101 Personal Interview, Participant-AWC12FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 17 July 2013.

102 Cleaver, ‘Paradoxes of Participation’, 600.

103 Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine.

104 See Imrana, ‘Aid, Intervention and Neocolonial “Development”’, 4.

105 Fergusson and Lohmann, ‘The Anti-Politics Machine’.

106 Alejandro Leal, ‘Participation’; A Cornwall and D Eade, Deconstructing Development Discourse: Buzzwords and Fuzzwords.

107 A Cornwall and K Brock, ‘What Do Buzzwords Do for Development Policy? A Critical Look at “Participation”, “Empowerment” and “Poverty Reduction”’, Third World Quarterly 26, no. 7 (2005): 1043–60.

108 Cleaver, ‘Paradoxes of Participation’, 598.

109 Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine, 27.

110 Fergusson and Lohmann, ‘The Anti-Politics Machine’.

111 Fergusson and Lohmann, ‘The Anti-Politics Machine’, 180–1. In the case of Theba-Tseka project in Lesotho, one clear point that Ferguson makes is that the sort of interventions undertaken by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) was as a result of a World Bank report which had represented Lesotho as a backward and closed economy, lacking access to the global (livestock and other) markets.

112 World Bank, Nigeria – Country Strategy Note, No. 20309; World Bank, The Comprehensive Development Framework: A Multi-partner Review (OED Reach, 2003), 1–3; World Bank, Nigeria – Country Partnership Strategy, No. 32412.

113 World Bank, Nigeria – Country Partnership Strategy, No. 32412.

114 Alejandro Leal, ‘Participation’; Cornwall and Brock, ‘What Do Buzzwords Do for Development Policy?’.

115 Personal Interview, Ethlorich, Omanwa, 2 February 2013.

116 K Orievulu, ‘Community Driven Development in Nigeria: Development Projects in Nigeria and the Political Empowerment of the Disenfranchised’, African Peace and Conflict Journal 7, no. 1 (2014): 68–80.

117 Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention.

118 Personal Interview, Participant-AWC12FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 17 July 2013.

119 Personal Interview, Lekoo, Yeghe, 25 June 2013.

120 Personal Interview, Lekoo, Yeghe, 25 June 2013.

121 See Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention.

122 Personal Interview, Participant-AWC12FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 17 July 2013.

123 Orievulu, ‘Community Driven Development in Nigeria’.

124 Williams, ‘Evaluating Participatory Development’; Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention.

125 Personal Interview, Participant-AWC1FUG, Ahai Ogbakiri, 2 February 2013

126 Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention.

127 Cooke and Kothari, Participation, 4.