Extent of Compliance to Standard Practices by Beneficiaries and Officers of Fadama Project in Oyo State, Nigeria

The National Fadama Development Project (NFDP) aimed at reducing poverty by improving living conditions of the rural poor and contributing to food security. However, this was not sufficiently realized as poverty and food insecurity still persist among rural households in Nigeria with no exception to Oyo State. This connotes some anomalies among which could be poor compliance to standard practice that eventually lessened expected outcomes despite project investments. Hence, this study examined the extent of NFDP beneficiaries and officers’ compliance to standard practices in Oyo state. Multistage sampling procedure was employed to elicit information from 120 beneficiaries selected from 5 LGAs (Orelope, Ibarapa-North, Oyo-East, Ogo Oluwa and Akinyele) under the 4 ADP zones in Oyo state. Questionnaire and in-depth interview were used to obtain data which were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The mean age of respondents was 45.6 years while most (74.2%) of them were males. Majority (83%) of the beneficiaries never paid their 50% share of inputs purchase; most (97.5%) likewise maintained that Fadama User Group (FUG) members were carried along at each stage of the project. Also 91.7% of respondents disagreed that due process was abused by officials during asset procurements, however, 67.1% of them complained that supplies of input usually arrived late; insufficient finance was a major constraint to project effectiveness according to 97.5% of the respondents. Officers guided beneficiaries in project decisions without lording ideas on them as 76.7% of respondents posited. The study concluded that there was a moderately high level of compliance (56.7%) of both officers and FUGs to project’s standard practices. It recommended that project stakeholders should put in more efforts towards better compliance. Also record keeping should be encouraged among beneficiaries to facilitate evaluation while sponsors should improve fund support and ensure timeliness in documents approval, as well as release of fund for the project.