THE SOCIAL WELFARE SERVICE OF THE FEDERAL CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT AGENCIES (FCDA) AND THE IMPACT ON SELECTED BENEFICIARIES
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The onus of providing social welfare service in any community or state overtly lies on the government. However some complementary efforts are made by the private sector in some regards, as in the case of housing, transport, Medicare and education. However, the bulk of social welfare services which include roads, national defence, health services, water supply, education, postal services, and waste disposal are provided by the public sector (Mitle, 2001). The State renders the aforementioned services through its departments and agencies. In Nigeria, the three tiers of government are involved in the provision and regulation of these services. Their involvements however vary and depend on the constitutional responsibility, financial disposition and the scale of delivery.
Adejumobi (1996) noted that the tasks of waste disposal and primary education are responsibilities of the Local Government; major water supply is the responsibility of State Governments. It is worth noting that post-primary education and health care services fall under recurrent functions, which can be performed either by the state or the Federal Government or both. In Nigeria, Agbola (2002) noted that successive governments in the country have made efforts in the provision of these services. However due to dwindling financial standing of the government, her achievements leaves much to be desired. Beside, current inclination towards economic liberalization, governments’ ability in meeting up with this responsibility is undermined. This has forced private
agencies to spring up and complement for the deficiencies in publicly supplied social services (Boreham, 2004). The Federal Government of Nigeria budget on public social service is always in billions of naira. Health services dropped from 18.26 billion naira to 16.94 billion naira from 1994 to 1995, which is a clear case of withdrawal. In the same vein, transportation dropped from 59.88 billion naira to 57.20 billion naira. Although there has been arithmetic progression on the educational sector in the Nigeria budget, further research revealed that discrepancy exists between the budget of educational sector in 2009 and the actual expenditure in the same year. This is also another evidence of government withdrawal in the provision of social services in Nigeria In most of the African Countries the responsibility of providing essential social services and bringing about development to the rural dwellers has been delegated to the local government councils. Social services represented services which are official to individuals, groups or communities either by the government or by non-governmental agencies in order to cope with social problems and to enhance the welfare of the people individually and collectively and are justified outside the free-market mechanism.
