nguti council monographic study - Impact monitoring of Forest ...

Monographic Study Nguti Council7.1 Main Lessons LearntElaborating a Monographic Study is a worthwhile activity for any locality that seeksparticipatory and balanced development. The exercise in Nguti Municipality was morechallenging due to several factors and interests.At the level of the various stakeholders, it was evident that participatory processesmeant that the different interests of the various clans were strongly protected evenwhen they were conflicting with the effective management of the planning process.People either withheld valuable information or distorted same for various reasons. Intaking ownership of this process, heated debates and open disagreements and evenhostility were commonplace. For example, the Hon. Ashu Mbanda (Member ofParliament for Nguti Constituency), when contacted repeatedly insisted that it was notnecessary for him to disclose information on the Micro Projects which he had fosteredin the municipality.At the level of the Council, there is little documentation of information aboutdevelopment efforts within the municipality. The absence of a central point such as alibrary where reports from the various development actors could be deposited madedata collection even more challenging.At the level of the service provider, the need to be more accommodating of severalshades of opinion almost threatened the success of the exercise. This was evident in themanner in which enumerators were selected and field operations executed. The need forlocal partnership for joint execution was not quite successful as assigned tasks wereabandoned. This resulted in GPS points not taken for the different villages. The processthat was originally planned for 2 months took almost 5 months. This had a directbearing on the cost of the operation due to the several movements back and forth.Finally, information is not well documented at all levels in Cameroon and it is notreadily made available even when it exists. Suspicion of people’s motives is embeddedin our culture and is partly to blame for difficulties encountered during the elaborationof the Monographic Study.7.2 OutlookFrom this Monographic Study, problems identified have been grouped in 5 thematicareas as follows; Social, Infrastructure, Local Economy, Natural Resource Managementand the Council as an Institution. The Strategic Planning activity should use thesethematic groupings in further diagnosis of the development problems, their causes andto propose solutions.The way forward for Nguti Council is to assume a coordinating role that wouldconcretize the realization of the Municipal Strategic Plan (2010-2014) as well as theelaboration and successful implementation of more than 75% of the activities in theOperational Plan 2010. The workshop to elaborate the Operational Plan for 2010should identify possible partners and sources of funding. To ensure the above, theCouncil should facilitate the action plan of the Technical Follow up Committee whichamongst others should hold periodic meetings to review and update the MonographicStudy and identify potential internal sources of council revenue. The committee shouldalso ascertain the level of progress and make valuable recommendations on quarterlybases.56