Local Authorities and Citizens Participation in Decision-Making within the Bamenda Municipalities

The vision of the state was to create opportunities for citizens' participation in the interest of decision-making.In spite of the efforts put in place by the state, the reality on the ground is that, there is still very low involvement of citizens in the decision-making process within the Bamenda municipalities.The objective of the study was to determine the extent to which Local Authorities have enhanced citizens' participation in decision-making and the bottlenecks that undermines this process within a specific case study, the Bamenda municipalities.In addition, to determine the strategies used by local authorities to inform and engage citizens' participation in decision-making within the Bamenda municipalities.The study used a mixed concurrent research design with a sample size of 400 respondents selected through stratify random sampling and purposive sampling techniques.Data was collected by using questionnaires and interviews.The SPSS Version 21 was used to analise data and Microsoft Word for text processing.Findings revealed a negative and insignificant citizen involvement in decision-making within the Bamenda municipalities.It also revealed that citizen participation increases when they are involved in decision-making that affects their life and finally that face-to-face meeting is the main strategy used by local authorities to mobilised citizen participation in the decision-making process.The strategy for involving the public was not constant because citizen participates in different activities other than decision-making.The study recommended the administrative and financial autonomy of local authorities with a bottom-top approach to decision-making