Eko Akete Mega Cities

Founded in  June 2002 to fill a vacuum in the infrastructures development space in a city that has stopped working due to neglect occassioned by two reasons. One is the relocation of the nation's capital from Lagos to Abuja, Secondly,  overstreched public utility caused by rapidly growing population without a corresponding  investment in infrastucture builing and maintenance. Eko Akete Summit Group thus was established as the voice and advocate for the challenges of 2015 attainment of millenium development goala as well as the demand of preparing lagos for imminent population explosion of an emmerging meta city status in 2015, when lagos will become the 3rd largest metropolise in the world.

Eko Akete Summit Group is the largest local government facilitator in Nigeria. The membership of the summit cut across the 774 local government and 37 local council development areas in Lagos State, Nigeria. It's membership also cut across the industry, commerce, academia, media, CBO's and NGO's, community development associations, etc.

Establish mainly to respond to the technical support requirement and assistance needed by the State and local government in Nigeria, especially Lagos State, where an emmerging metapolise and global market is becoming a reality, while just coming out of 37 years interegnum of military junta.

The summit group started with the conduct of a megacity summit in 2003 in Badagry, Akodo and Otta (Ogun State) respectively between April and November, 2003. The summit discussed issues of urbarnization, sustainability, planning and management by local government as well as good practices in environmental restoration and capacity development by means of developing and exchanging knowledge in the field of sustainable urbanization.

In 2005, a follow up summit was held to deliberate on the jouney and success made so far, and inherent challenge to meet the MDG 2015. The need for an urgent public intervention became clear as growth of the megapolise is occuring at a much faster pace than the national average. At the same time lagos megacities are confronted by poverty and infrastructure decay. Indeed, the city stopped working, yet it is the engine of growth for the nation, nay the West African (Ecowas) sub-region.

One of the issues brought to fore at that summit is the change in nthe administrative system of local government from the hither council system to Council Mnager system which has placed a lot of responsibilities on the chief administrative officer(Council Manager). This recommendation was accepted by the State government and adopted for immediate implementation.

Urban development must move beyond the more immediate responses to urgent needs and become a dynamic and strategic long term process, hence the establishment of Eko Akete Summit Group.

Our local governments have to respond today with concrete results and provide public infrastructure, such as improved water supplies, transportation, security, housing and health services, education and mortgage service as a function of pro poor policy to stimulate the local economy.

To ensure this process, strategic and holistics planning is a key to competences for delivery of public services, water, sanitation and environment Fiscal realities rarely match the actual need of public investments and increase teh need for local authorities to work with a broad array of stakeholders from the government sphere, teh organized private sector and civil society. This can be be done through a private initiative, and that is what Eko Akete Summit Group has come to fill; the gap created by government inadequacy.

It is important both the State and local governments show examples of vision and strategic planning managing their resources, ensuring service delivery, attracting investment and increasing the quality of life of the citizenry.

Lack of decentralization of powers and responsibility by the Federal and State government has eroded so much power and capacity to mobilize its own fund for most municpal services, especially those guarantee by the constitution exclusively to local governments. One of such power is the control and regulation of advert and signages which hither has provided local government with much needed leverage has been subverted by teh State, this and so many more municipal roles of local authorities that requires revertion are reasons for the establishment of the summit group.

Our Objectives

Our objectives is to promote strong and effective democratic local governments through Nigeria. To be the foremost source of key information regarding local government administration, urbarn sustainability and development and a source of exchange and capacity building.

We promote the values and issues of economic, social,cultiral, vocational and environmental and public service based on the principles of good governance and best practice, sustainability and social inclusion:-

• To develop and provide up-to date training courses and cutting-edge training material targeting policy makers and practitioners
• To document and disseminate best practices on sustainable urbanization policies, environmental restoration.
• To foster expert and training networks around the world strenghtening capacity- building on sustainable urbanization
• To initiate appropriate research on sustainable orban development

Vision

To ensure that cities in Lagos and indeed Nigeria become more environmentally friendly in support of sustainable urban development and solutions to global issues in a raapidly growing urbanized world, as aleading governance capacity building institution

Goal

• To deliver on a sustaible bsis local and international training courses that build and strenghten the capacities of local government and other stakeholders in sustainable urban development practices in Lagos, Nigeria.

• To build and work in pertnership with institutional partners.