Effect of Citizen’s Enlightenment on Community Participation in the Development of Anambra State, Nigeria (2014-2019)

Abstract

The attainment of development encompasses citizens’ enlightenment in a democratic setting where mutual responsibility involves active participation of the citizens and government. The glaring apathy of citizens’ involvement in development issues in their local government and communities has been traced to lack of capacity, skill, and pre-requisite knowledge for involvement. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of citizen’s enlightenment on community participation in development in selected local government in Anambra State. The study adopted the cross-sectional survey research design. The population of the study comprised of 1779 members of registered community associations who live within the different communities in the selected local government areas of Anambra States. The study adopted a simple random sampling technique to determine the sample size of 249. The questionnaire relating to citizen enlightenment and community participation was validated before use to collect data. Descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) was employed for demographic data analysis, while regression analysis was used to analyse the effect. The results (?= 0.301, t = 4.533, p<0.05) showed that citizen enlightenment had a positive and significant effect on community participation in development in Anambra State. Consequently, citizen enlightenment should be encouraged in order to drive the participation of citizens in the development of their communities.