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The Achievements of CSDA Katsina

Katsina City News
03 Jul, 2024
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By Danjuma Katsina

The Community and Social Development Agency (CSDA) has been supporting communities across Nigeria including Katsina state.

It is now manned by an enlightened and experienced professional, Muhammad Dikko Abdulaziz whose job is to provide technical support and periodic monitoring of community based projects.

He had not only completed projects in 25 communities left behind by the past regimes, he had also consistently strated implementing new projects in more than 70 communities in Katsina state.

Even as they don’t initiate the projects for the beneficiary communities, they however get funded by the state government while if the the projects are completed to standard the state gets reimbursed by the World Bank.

It is the people of the community that decide on the type of projects they want that will support education and healthcare while the agency approves it based on the arrangements on ground.

Such communities will only provide 3 percent of the funds while the World Bank supports it with 97 percent based on what the state government approves to spend.

Although the project is community based, no community receives more than N12 million naira per project approved for it.

With this several communities have benefitted in several ways by improving their education and health sectors.

Muhammad Dikko Abdulaziz: How I Got Here

The wealth of experience of the man in charge, Muhammad Dikko Abdulaziz has encouraged the development of the projects such that more communities are now benefitting with various projects.

It is worthy of mention to talk about how a man of such calibre is made it to this level of efficiency and experience.

He was born in Katsina over 50 years ago. He did both his primary and secondary education in Katsina city.

Later in the year 1990 he got admission into the prestigious Ahmadu Bello University, (ABU) Zaria where did his BSc in Geography.

He also did his MSc in Environmental Management at the same university.

Some of his friends were saying he should become an academician since he has a master degree.

He later joined the services of Katsina state government with the ministry of education in the year 2000. He was posted to KCK secondary school in Katsina where he worked for two years only.

He later transfered his services to SEFA, being that he has a good background in environmental management. At that time there was no ministry of environment in Katsina state. The only agency that oversees issues of environment is SEFA. There he spent a total of two to three years before joining the FADAMA Project another foreign funded project.

Actually Katsina was not part of the FADAMA 1 Project, so it was the FADAMA 2 Project that he joined which was originally funded by the African Development Bank and later the World Bank joined the funding.

He got a special posting to the project in 2004 as the Environmental Specialist of the project. He had worked with the project for 12 years.

Only about five to six months after he left the project, a ministry of environment was founded in Katsina, and he transfered his services to the ministry where he was appointed as the Director, Draught and Desertification of the ministry.

It was from there that he got a special posting to the project as an environmental specialist in 2004.

The project began in 2017 when the CSDA was funded by the World Bank and about 30 states across Nigeria benefited from the project including Katsina state.

When the project started there weren’t enough qualified and experienced staff to mann the World Bank project.

He was then at the ministry of environment and several interested persons applied but did not meet the standard required by the World Bank but he was lucky to have been appointed.

He started as the operations manager of the project in that special posting by the state governor.

He was the operations manager of the project for seven months when he was made the Acting General Manager in 2018. In 2019 he was made the substantive General Manager of the project.

This is the staircase he climbed to get where he is at the moment.

Note: visit Katsina Times TV on Youtube and Katsina City News/Katsina Times facebook for the full Video Interview with Muhammad Dikko Abdullaziz in hausa and english.