The federal government says 36 million Nigerians benefited from its Community Social Development Project (CSDP).

Sadiiya Umar Farouq, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, disclosed that no fewer than 36 million Nigerians benefited within 11 years in the country.

She stated this in her opening address at the ‘Close Out’ event for the CSDP on Tuesday in Abuja to mark the end of CSDP in Nigeria.

She said the project, which became effective in 2009, had two additional financing totalling $415 million.

The minister stressed that the CSDP operated with the core principle of the community-driven development (CDD) approach.

She explained that this was a development paradigm that focused on the poor and vulnerable needs and empowered them with development resources to address their peculiar needs.

“Using this unique approach, the CSDP has implemented micro-projects in poor communities across the 543 Local Government Areas of 29 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

“This represents about 70 per cent of the total number of local governments in Nigeria. The poor communities are identified specifically through the use of Poverty Maps agreed to by each participating state and FCT,” she explained.

Ms Farouq claimed that the project substantially impacted the access of the poor and vulnerable to social and natural resources infrastructure across the benefitting communities.

She added that the total number of beneficiaries of CSDP stood at 11 million direct beneficiaries across 29 states, with an estimated 25 million indirect beneficiaries. According to the minister, the CSDP has achieved, among others, the completion of 16,166 micro-projects in 5,664 communities and 934 vulnerable groups.

“These micro-projects cut across eight sectors of intervention, namely education, health, water, transportation, electrification, socio-economic, environment and community housing; 5,764 classrooms, 1,323 health centres and 4,442 micro water projects were constructed and or rehabilitated,” she disclosed.

(NAN)