Whose accountability? Participation and partnership in a disabling environment

The article reviews the development of community participation and accounta bility under the auspices of a donor funded basic health services project i n Benue state, Nigeria. The three-year work of the Benue Health Fund Projec t in a challenging policy and institutional environment is presented from t he standpoint that community involvement in health and indeed in other sect ors is fundamentally compromised without an enabling environment. The artic le highlights a number of environmental constraints faced by the project. T hese include an unstable and often unsupportive policy regime; a bureaucrat ic system ndt given to devolution and decentralisation: the limited capacit y of managers to support a process of accountability through participation; and the breakdown in relations between the people and the stare. while the article emphasises that modelling was not an option in such a context, the specific mechanisms evolved to strengthen participation might still offer some lessons for practice elsewhere.