Fadama III Beneficiaries’ Adherence to Project Guidelines in Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Fadama III project in Nigeria like other community driven development projects is faced with a lot of challenges in spite of the laudable goals and approach. A major challenge of the projects is non-adherence to implementation guidelines among the implementers and beneficiaries. This study therefore assessed the adherence of project beneficiaries in Ogun state to the Fadama III implementation guidelines in order to make necessary recommendations to the implementers for proper management. Ijebu division was randomly selected out of the four (4) divisions in Ogun state. Two (2) out of the six (6) local government areas (LGAs)  constituting the division were randomly sampled for the study. All the eight (8) registered Fadama Community Associations (FCAs) in the two LGAs were sampled. Eight focus group discussions (FGDs) and four in-depth interviews with key informants (IDIs) were used to verify secondary data obtained from the records of the FCAs. Adherence to project  implementation guidelines ranged from fair to high while adherence to procurement guidelines and Fadama users’ equity fund (FUEF) requirements needed to be improved. Beneficiaries were over expectant of the benefits accruable from the project, which led to reduction in their enthusiasm towards the project because of its slow implementation. It was recommended that the implementers should keep up their efforts at sensitising beneficiaries on the implementation guidelines of the project, re-work their strategies at addressing procurement and FUEF inadequacies among the beneficiaries and fast-track the delivery of project benefits in the communities.

Key words: Beneficiaries’ adherence, implementation guidelines and Fadama users’ equity fund compliance