FEMI ALUFA POST: Ijero Municipal Agenda -Thoughts on Redeeming our Community (Executive Summary)

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Ijero Municipal Vision Plan is the result of a personal research and consensus building process of a better picture of Ijero -Ekiti Township and its inhabitants for our contemporary times. Not everyone will agree with every item involved with the Municipal Vision Plan. However, the Ijero Municipal Vision Plan provides an exciting point of departure and an important tool to assist the Ijero-Ekiti Municipality in the future. On behalf of the Ijero Municipal Congress (IMC), a socio-political and community organization of Ijero-Ekiti, Ekiti State, South-West of Nigeria, my thanks is extended to all the Ijero Patriots; living and dead who have contributed meaningfully to Ijero development and envisioned a better future for the community visioning processes to the present status. Ijero-Ekiti Municipality Values Statement Values means worth, standard and priorities that ultimately drives our life. Values are more important than money. We succeed only to the degree of God’s principles and values we believes in life as individuals, organizations, community and nation. The Ijero-Ekiti Municipality of my vision is a cohesive and mutual community that values and cares about: preserving and enhancing its heritage as a symbiotic community; providing a welcoming, friendly, vibrant, hometown atmosphere; developing a sustainable economy for the inhabitants; maintaining and improving the health and integrity of the natural environment; ensuring individual choice and freedom of thoughts; and promoting a diverse, population of year-round and seasonal residents and visitors who are committed to the community. Ijero-Ekiti Municipality Vision Statement 1. Community Character The Ijero-Ekiti Municipality is a cohesive and mutual community… Where residents and visitors practice an Ajoro (historic symbiotic relationship spirit) with attribute demand that offers a safe, friendly, peaceful atmosphere and prosperous manner where individuals can live, work, play and raise a family. 2. Economic Viability/Sustainability: The Ijero-Ekiti Municipality is a cohesive and mutual community… Where a strong and sustainable year-round economy insured through partnerships with local businesses, local and state and federal government agencies and secured by a healthy, vibrant collective supports towards a diverse economic and employment needs of the local residents for the benefit of all. 3. Natural Resources The Ijero-Ekiti Municipality is a cohesive and mutual community… Where the actions of the community ensure that natural resources and its habitat are protected, that views from Town to the surrounding Suburbs are maintained, that both air and water quality are clean and improved, and green forest are preserved. 4. Transportation The Ijero-Ekiti Municipality is a cohesive and mutual community… Where a good road transportation system provides convenient, low cost, clean, sustainable links to the street area, parking facilities, uptown, and throughout the community and district. 5. Housing The Ijero-Ekiti Municipality is a cohesive and mutual community… Where a diversity of modern housing is integrated throughout the community and provides a variety of housing options for the beautification of the township. 6. Cultural Resources The Ijero-Ekiti Municipality is a cohesive and mutual community… Where arts, festival, and cultural events and facilities improve the community experience for residents and visitors, offer diverse and affordable programming, and promote Ijero-Ekiti Township as a year-round cultural center and boosting the tourism potential of Ijero Municipality, district and Ekiti State in general. 7. Recreational Resources The Ijero-Ekiti Municipal is a cohesive and mutual community… Where the natural beauty of the Suburbs and the Countryside is improved by world class recreational opportunities that provide diverse activities throughout the year. Those activities are served by community facilities that enrich the visitor experience while ensuring affordable and accessible recreation opportunities for residents and visitors. 8. Education, Government, Institutions The Ijero-Ekiti Municipality is a cohesive and mutual community… Where a responsive and accessible municipal local government with the support of the state and federal government encourage citizen’s participation in education of the children, youths and women, local democracy and community development in order to maintain and improve the quality of a life more abundant for all. 9. Population The Ijero-Ekiti Municipality is a cohesive and mutual community… Where residents celebrate their collective homogeny and where residents and visitors enjoy the community spirit that makes one feel comfortable, contented and healthy. 10. The Built Environment The Ijero-Ekiti Municipality is a cohesive and mutual community… Where the built environment is of high quality design and construction, this respects the environmental and natural setting while also conveying innovation and creativity and that supports community character and enhances the quality of life through sustainable building and estate development principles. II. VALUES AND VISION STATEMENT A. INTRODUCTION “We need the collective conviction and courage to make bold decisions and stand in support of them as we move forward as a people. We need to discern and act from any awareness that the best decisions for the community are dynamic and we need to begin now and not any distant future.” 1. What is a Community Vision Plan? A community vision plan is a document a community uses to describe its preferred future and to chart its steps toward that future. Public or community involvement shapes a vision plan, in that the core of the plan must be what the community identifies as its shared values and purpose, which translate into qualitative aspects of what the community should look like socially, politically, economically and environmentally in not a distant future of time e.g. 10-20 years in terms of development. The visioning process allows community members to articulate their opinions about values individually and in an open forum. Consequently, after listening to the ideas and concerns of other citizens, members of the community realize that they share opinions and are stakeholders in the community’s future. In this way, the visioning process tends to emphasize community assets rather than needs, and planning options are assessed based on shared values. A community vision plan then describes in narrative form the consensus reached about what the community wants to become. The community vision plan is, by its nature, very general; it is focused on visioning and doesn’t drift toward too much detail or specific solutions. This is somewhat different from many conventional planning documents, which identify improvement projects and implementation programmes. Yet a community vision plan does provide a starting point for the development and/or updating of a more detailed master plan and other studies that could provide detailed information necessary to institute specific programmes. Visioning is a useful tool in long-range comprehensive planning because it establishes a framework for ideas and information; it makes a connection between the collection of data and the creation of vision statements and action steps. Ultimately, visioning provides context for the consideration of planning policies, allocation of funding, and rationale for their approval. For the Town of Ijero-Ekiti Municipality, the visioning process is like a “Nehemiahic Vision” which the Biblical Nehemiah galvanized his people in the re- building of the wall of Jerusalem. The visioning process is to be used for identifying necessary data inventory and analysis for future planning and policy-making decisions. There are three key elements in the Ijero-Ekiti Municipal Vision Plan. First, a broad Values Statement that describes, in very general terms, the core qualities of life that the community recognizes. Second, a Vision Statement that relates these values to a series of planning topic categories and addresses key planning issues such as housing, transportation, economic sustainability and natural resources. Third, an Action Plan that defines the next steps for achieving the stated “thematic” vision. The Action Plan lists Action Steps that focus on the specific themes. 2. Purpose of the Ijero Municipal Vision Plan The purpose of the Ijero Municipal Vision Plan is to provide documentation regarding the visioning process and to itemize specific Action Steps that the Town of Ijero-Ekiti Municipality should undertake to implement the Vision Statement. The proposed Action Steps include a variety of recommendations to more fully define specific attributes of the Vision Statement. The Vision Plan promotes shared public values and a vision for the future of the community and should be used by elected and appointed officials in making important decisions that will impact the future of the Ijero-Ekiti Municipality community by the year 2025 for the Ijero Municipal Developmental Goals (IMDGs). 3. Plan Development The Ijero Municipal Congress (IMC) will be convening an annual convention and retreat to establish a common agenda for the Ijero-Ekiti Township to pursue over the coming year, as well as years to come. One of the goals is to provide a compass for the organization and the community a Blueprint to be run as a template for the Ijero community development in the 21st century world. The Congress will "incorporate Ijero-Ekiti Municipality’s unique characteristics into a consistent vision for the community's future.” The visioning process will be guided by the participation of Ijero stakeholders; indigenes at home and in the Diaspora, residents, property owners, seasonal residents, local employees and visitors. All the stakeholders will be participated to endorse at varying degrees in gathering information, identifying values, identifying a preferred future development, and finally, crafting Vision Statements for specific topics categories from time to time or as envisioned in this booklet. 4. Plan Organization This document is organized into five primary segments: Executive Summary, Values and Vision Statement, Preferred Scenario and Survey Results, Action Plan, Conclusion Statement, and Documentation. The Executive Summary section provides a brief explanation of the Vision Plan process and its results. The Values and Vision Statement section describes the overall visioning process including public workshops, stakeholder interviews, and other outreach efforts and includes general information regarding meeting formats, how information is collected at each meeting and ultimately informed the final product. The Values and Vision Statement section also includes the Values and Vision Statement will develop and refined by the public and the Advisory Committee. The Action Plan section includes Action Steps and specific improvements that the Ijero-Ekiti Municipality should consider in order to implement the Vision Plan. The Conclusion Statement section provides a comment on the visioning process and the outcome of the final product. Culled from my upcoming Book,The Municipal Agenda :Thoughts on Redeeming our Ekiti Communities. Copyright(C) 2016