Analysis of Data

A project is said to be sustainable when it continues to deliver benefits to the project beneficiaries and /or other constituencies for an extended period after the commission’s financial assistance has been terminated^36,37 Key elements of a sustainability strategy should be introduced early in the project design phase. Several elements have been identified for the sustainability strategies adopted by individual country programs. These include, but are not limited to: a thorough analysis of both governmental and non-governmental institutions involved in project implementation, baseline assessments of household livelihood security and resilience, appropriate risk analysis, and formulation of exit strategies.³⁸

Several factors are responsible for poor sustainability. Some are simple and others quite complex. Some are within the control of the project management, while others come as external threats. Some of the factors can be (and indeed ought to be) taken care of right at the design stage of a project, whereas, others can be tracked and corrected during implementation, through monitoring. It is, therefore important that the factors that affect sustainability are articulated well and incorporated, as far as possible at the design stage.

Later, the same factors can be followed up through monitoring.³⁰ Checklist for assessing the relevance, acceptability, economic and financial viability, environmental sustainability, implementation and monitoring strategy and the post-implementation operation and maintenance can be applied to check the aspects of sustainability, at the time of designing the projects.

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In the review of the comprehensive project implementation report of the 2011 CGS to 113 LGAs of Nigeria,¹² by the Independent Monitors, attempt was made to assess the sustainability of the provided facilities. Questionnaire was used to elicit the involvement of the communities in the various stages of project planning and implementation, the relevance, receptiveness and accessibility of the projects to the potential beneficiaries in the host communities. The maintenance and sustainability of the projects was then assessed from the answers to these questions by the researcher. It was found that 82.1% of the projects executed under this funding cycle could be maintained by the communities at their current level of development and so were viewed to be sustainable. This was however, not the case in 524 (9.6%) of projects earmarked under that funding cycle. The limitation of the study was that the actual or real performance in maintenance and sustainability was not further probed into after the completion, handing over and period of utilization of those projects by the host communities. This is the gap that this present study sought to fill as the sustainability and maintenance of the projects would be assessed long after the completion of the projects and at the time the facilities had been put into actual use by the benefiting communities.

A study titled grassroots participation in decision-making process and development programs as correlate of sustainability of community development programs in Nigeria,³⁹ which was carried out in Osun and Kwara States of Nigeria using a descriptive survey research design with a multi stage sampling technique described and analyzed the variables of grassroots participation and decision-making process, and their influence on sustainability of community development programs. The study population comprised members of community development associations, community leaders, change agents and political representatives in nine selected communities each from Osun and Kwara States in Nigeria, based on records of participation in community development projects. Through stratified random sampling technique, 1,984 respondents (community leaders (266); change-agents (569); members of

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community development associations (1,022) and political representatives (127) in nine communities each from Osun (964) and Kwara states (1,020) were selected. Two sets of questionnaire were employed in the study for data collection.

The first set of questionnaire was tagged Grassroots Participation Assessment Scale (GPAS) while the second set was tagged Community Development Sustainability Questionnaire (CDSQ). The instruments were subjected to validity and reliability test. Data were analyzed using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation and t-test. The hypotheses generated were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Results showed that there was significant relationship between grassroots participation in development programs, decision-making process and sustainability of development programs. Furthermore, political instability, leadership problems, communal clashes, inadequate funding and poor accountability impeded sustainability. It was recommended that the problems of political instability, leadership, inadequate funding, communal clashes, accountability, and communication gap should be taken care of in grassroots decision making in development programs. The researchers concluded that grassroots participation in development programs and decision-making process play a vital role in community development programs. Local participation being at the heart of a people-centered development paradigm is anchored on empowerment and people’s sovereignty as the defining principles of authentic sustainable development.

Development in such circumstance becomes a people’s movement and providing people with the opportunity and environment for self-sustaining development. Finally, grassroots participation in development programs and decision-making process have been established to be a vital tool which facilitated sustainability of community development programs.³⁹ The study is relevant to my work in that it points out the importance of involving the community/

programs beneficiaries to ensure sustainability of the provided facilities/services. However only questionnaire was used for this study and this would be improved upon in my work by

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addition of the use of key informant interview and actual visit to executed project sites to determine its maintenance and sustainability.