MDB Results 2026 · Nigeria · Day 3 of 6
What SEEFOR Actually Was
His mother’s friend was waiting for them at the hotel.
His name was Toju Onaiwu. He had been the Project Coordinator for SEEFOR in Edo State — the man who ran the project on the ground from 2012 to 2020. He was a quiet man who seemed to choose his words carefully, as if each one cost something. He shook Kofi’s hand and looked at him for a moment before saying anything.
“So you have been to Washington,” Toju said.
“Yes,” Kofi said. “I met the genies.”
Toju looked at Kofi’s mother. She smiled.
“Come,” said Toju. “I will show you what the genies were for.”
They drove out of Benin City. The roads changed. Some were smooth concrete with drains on both sides. Others were mud and potholes. And then Toju stopped the car at the entrance of a community and pointed.
A road. Concrete. Running through the neighbourhood. Neat, level. Children walking on it. A woman carrying goods on her head, walking straight, not picking around puddles. Motorcycles moving freely.
“We built that,” Toju said. “Youth from this community built that. They were paid. They were supervised. And it was their road.”
“How many?” Kofi asked.
“In Edo State alone — 104 road contracts. All completed.”
“How many people built them?”
“18,680 youth were employed through the project. And 104 of them became supervisors — graduates who oversaw the work on the ground.”
Kofi looked at the road for a long time.
“Why did they need a World Bank project to do this?” he asked. “Couldn’t the state government just build roads?”
Toju did not answer immediately. He sat with the question for a moment, the way a person sits with a question that is more complicated than it looks.
“This region,” he said, “had just come through a decade of militancy. Young men with no work and no hope had picked up guns instead of tools. The amnesty programme in 2007 brought peace. But peace without work does not hold. The project was designed to hold the peace. Youth employment through public works — labour-intensive, community-selected, locally supervised. Not a handout. A job.”
They drove through more communities. Water points. Health centres. Market stalls. A small bridge over a creek that a community had built for itself using project funds.
“These are the community projects,” Toju said. “Communities decided what they needed. They designed it. They built it. They own it. 108 micro-projects completed across 18 local governments. Health centres, electrification, water schemes, town halls, market shops.”
“Did they always choose the right thing?” Kofi asked.
Toju smiled. “They knew what they needed better than anyone in Abuja or Washington. That is the whole point of community-driven development. The Bank does not decide. The community decides. The Bank provides the framework and the funds.”
“What did the evaluators say?” Kofi asked. “The independent ones. The ones from the ships.”
Toju looked at Kofi’s mother. Then back at Kofi.
“The Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank rated the project Satisfactory across all dimensions. Both objectives rated Substantial. Bank Performance: Satisfactory. Quality of Monitoring: Substantial. It is one of only two governance projects in all of Nigeria — out of 140 in Sub-Saharan Africa evaluated between 2000 and 2021 — rated Satisfactory or above on all five IEG dimensions. ”
“So the genie gave it a good grade.”
“The genie gave it a good grade,” Toju confirmed. “But more important than the grade — the state government kept going after the project closed.”
“What do you mean?” Kofi asked.
“In 2020, after the World Bank project ended, the Edo State Government created SEEFOR Plus. With their own money. Same template. Same governance structure. Same community engagement. Same roads selection process. Same monitoring.”
“Why?”
“Because it worked. 234 road contracts awarded. 225 completed. The state did not need the Bank anymore to do this. They had learned. They had institutionalised it.”
Kofi thought about this. He thought about the genies he had met — all those conversations about ratings and gaps and percentages and ships that never quite got to where the money landed. And here was where it landed. A road in Benin City, built by a young man who had been paid for the work, supervised by a graduate from the community, still in use five years after the project closed.
“Toju,” he said. “Was anyone else watching? To make sure the projects were real?”
Toju smiled again. This time there was something else in it — not just pride, but the memory of a specific story.
“Yes,” he said. “Someone was watching. And the story of how they watched is the story of tomorrow.”
Source Documents & Video
The full project record is publicly available. The ICR is the World Bank’s own completion report, written by the task team. The ICRR is the Independent Evaluation Group’s independent verdict. The video was made in Edo State in 2018 — Toju Onaiwu appears in the first five minutes.
ICR — World Bank Completion Report ICRR — IEG Independent Evaluation ▶ Watch: SEEFOR Edo State (2018)Source Documents & Project Video
The full ICR and IEG independent review are published below. Toju Onaiwu, Project Coordinator for SEEFOR in Edo State, appears in the first five minutes of the project video — a 30-minute overview of what SEEFOR built on the ground.
ICR — Full Report IEG Independent Review ▶ Watch: SEEFOR Project Video