The SCEEP communities are located from 3 senatorial district of Bauchi state which includes Bauchi North, Central and South senatorial districts. The communities have a population of approximately 25, 000 to 35,000 people with age groups from: 0-5, 6-10, 11-18, 19-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61-70, 70- above.

Most of the community members are mostly Muslims with about three mosques. The community thrives actively on agriculture; it has an outsized expanse of rich farmland. On the farmlands, maize, sesame, millet and Ground nuts are cultivated. The communities have a market that is active during the dry season but, inactive as a result of the intensive flood and erosion during the rainy season.

About Community 2:
Most of the community members are predominantly farmers and petty traders, from the farming what they cultivate Groundnuts, Guinea corn, Bennie seed and Beans with an average annual income of N116, 000.00 with low level of education. 80% of the community members are unemployed with the government, what they essentially engage in is just the farming and other small businesses in the communities.

Purpose of intervention:
The purpose for intervention of this exercise is to recognise that Nigeria´s electoral democracy suffers inherent deficits, critical among which is the exclusion of marginalized groups in the electoral process, and that building enduring democracy in Nigeria requires that voices of these groups need to be harvested in the electoral process in ways that enhance citizens agency in the electoral process.

Generally, participation refers to citizen's participation and representation in invited/formal spaces provided by the state. The problem, however, is that formal participation spaces are not always available or accessible to marginalized citizens (e.g. women, girls and indigenous or lower class persons (where it may be relevant, the disabled and so on). As such, it is often necessary to create spaces so that their interests and needs may be represented and their rights expressed and defended.

Despite observance of the routine of elections and increasingly using the quality of elections as the indicator of the quality of democracy, concerns remain that elections have largely failed to be credible, free and fair, and more importantly, that governments are not accountable to citizens. This persistence of electoral authoritarianism and absence of electoral accountability have remained key challenges for Nigeria´s electoral process since 1999.

Mission: The mission of the project is to support citizens, especially women, youth and persons living with disability to participate in and influence the electoral process. The project also tends to address and promote inclusiveness of women, youth and persons living with disability in the Nigerian electoral system.

Target Group: The project is targeting formal participation of marginalized citizens (e.g. women, youths and indigenous or lower caste persons the disabled and so on). As such, it is often necessary to create spaces so that their interests and needs may be represented and their rights expressed and defended.

PROJECT STATUS BEFORE INTERVENTION:

Generally, participation refers to citizen's participation and representation in invited/formal spaces provided by the state. The problem, however, is that formal participation spaces are not always available or accessible to marginalized citizens (e.g. women, girls and indigenous or lower caste persons (where it may be relevant, the PWDs and so on). As such, it is often necessary to create spaces so that their interests and needs may be represented and their rights expressed and defended.

PROJECT STATUS DURING INTERVENTION:

Basically, the status of the community members during the intervention shows that they now know that they have a RIGHT to speak for themselves, social mobilization to help strengthen local voice; increase the extent to which local groups and communities can participate actively in decision-making processes; ensure that citizens and communities are able to hold local government and service providers to account. Community members and the target groups are better informed and now know that they have a right to say so that their voices can be heard and as such they are the ones to demand for their rights from their duty bearers for development of their communities.

PROJECT STATUS AFTER INTERVENTION:

PROGRESS: include the number of people benefiting/benefited from the project and what are the benefits. Number of target groups that have benefited so far in knowing their rights, political participation, how prioritise and identify community issues, Advocacy and resource mobilization skills

• Youths: 1380
• Men: 552
• Women: 690
• PWDs: 138

Challenges: Some of the challenges encountered in the course of this SCEEP project include:

• Low literacy level is a challenge that is affecting our target groups from participating in politics. Few of the women that participated have to seek for consent from their husbands to participate in outdoor activities.
• PWDs have low self-esteem
• Most of the women are not allowed to mingle with the male counterpart during activities
• The deploying of many tools in one day proved to be burdensome on the community members, as their attention span is short. When the sessions lasted for more than an hour or two, the active participation of people present noticeably dwindled. We employed various energisers and techniques of involving individuals to work around this challenge.

Solutions:

EFFORTS TO ADDRESS THE ABOVE CHALLENGES:

• The communities either had issues related to education as part of their top priorities or discussion revealed the dire need for improvement in education for children, youths and women.
• There is need for government to increase both education and Economic empowerment program with more emphasis on rural communities special consideration to given to girls, youth and people with disabilities.
• Access to healthcare services, particularly maternal and child care is a challenge in all the communities facilitated, as they reported cases of deaths during childbirth due to complications and inability to access appropriate health services in good time despite having health centres. This condition is escalated by the state embargo on the recruitment and posting of trained health workers, this is an avenue for advocacy that could be linked across local, state and national levels.
• In addition to the high burden of care placed on women in these communities, women were also noticed to have low self-esteem, the least educated and are reluctant to participate in community decision making despite being very enthusiastic about community development processes .
• PWD should be encouraged to showcase their potentiality and withstand any challenge and fight for their rights at any time at all level.
• Continues community sensitization meetings for participation of women, PWDs and youths in activities particularly that, which will bring about development, change in their communities and perceptions.

Model strategies:

• Preparatory visits
• Community Mapping of existing platforms
• Community Mobilization (Identification of community Facilitators)
• Training of community Facilitators on voter education
• Orientation Meeting
• LGA citizen engagement meeting
• State citizen engagement meeting
• Facilitation of village book
• Training on Advocacy skills and resource mobilization

Challenges: What are the challenges faced base on the strategies applied and what is done differently to address the issue?

• Low self-esteem of people with disability (PWDs)
• Low literacy level is a challenge
• Some of the women that participated have to seek for consent from their husbands to participate in outdoor activities

Lessons learned in the process: The organization learned from the project that the beneficiaries are now aware that they also have a right to say and be part of any participation or decisions making process despite their low level of education and low esteem, that is not business as usual where politicians will come and buy their rights and then get away with it, they just need some little push from their representatives and the sky will be their limit. We also learned that the beneficiaries need more capacity building and be shown in the practical how some of the things are been done to achieve their goals.

Health: Some of the communities have health facilities, as a result, the residents patronize it, and also community members from neighbouring communities patronize these health facilities where minor cases of illnesses are treated while severe ones are referred. Tropical diseases like malaria, typhoid, and diarrhoea are frequent ailments in the communities. The health facility patronised sometimes do not have essential drugs to deal with these illnesses. There are no traditional birth attendants in the community.

Education: Few of the communities have primary schools and a junior secondary schools. The school do not provide free universal basic education that covers from primary one to six. There are intruders to the school premises after school hours. Some of the school buildings included staff rooms that are supported by the Education Trust Fund. The Schools have pit toilets that are not conducive for pupils to use. Sometimes school pupils who reside in the neighbourhood of the school go home when they need to use a toilet because they are not use to the ones in the school. During the rainy season, the school has challenges with flooding; on occasion, students can´t have access to the school as a result of the flood. In addition, the school suffers from the infringement by young people who go into the school at will to engage in inappropriate activities like smoking because the school is unfenced.

Employment Benefit: Most of the community members are predominantly farmers and traders who cultivate Groundnuts, sesame, Guinea corn and millet, with an average annual income of N116, 000 per household; and an average daily expenditure of an individual put at N592 per household. Market stalls are owned by few individuals. Unskilled workers are also available in the communities, and they earn between N800 and N1, 200 daily.