PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF LOWER BENUE RIVER BASIN AUTHORITY IN NASARAWA STATE

Purpose: Lower Benue River Basin Development Authority has been in existence for decades and has of recent attracted criticisms regarding it continued funding going by its seemingly weak performance. This study aims at evaluating the performance of Lower Benue River Basin Development Authority since inception using Nasarawa State as a case study.

Design/methodology/approach: The major data collection instrument was focused group discussion complemented by official records of data on number of projects executed. The measurable indicators required were related to the variables having direct link with the activities of the agency. Nasarawa State has a total of 13 LGAs and 1610 localities from which 13 localities were systematically sampled; one from each Local Government Area. A total of 13 community leaders were then purposively selected, one from each community. Using an evaluation scale of 1 for very low and 5 for very high, the community leaders were engaged to evaluate impact of project activities on host communities, extent of achievement of its developmental objectives, and factors influencing the distribution of projects across the state. Descriptive statistics were utilized in the analysis and discussion of findings.

Findings: The result shows that a total of 107 (50.23%) projects out of the total of 213 projects executed by the agency in Nasarawa State were concentrated in 4 Local Government Areas of Lafia, Akwanga, Doma and Awe. Majority of the Local Government Areas had only water borehole projects which accounted for 88.26% of total projects executed in the state.

Research limitations/Implications: This study is limited to the use of data from the official records of government and as such further study should endeavour to investigate these projects by visiting all project communities. This performance evaluation of LBRBDA could be improved by studying all the states covered by LBRBDA activities. These limitations notwithstanding, the findings from this study provide some level of insight that could gauge the overall performance of LBRBDA in Nigeria. The contribution to knowledge is that this study evaluated the performance of LBRBDA in Nasarawa state.

Practical implications: It is recommended that government should consolidate the gains of River Basin Development Authority by ensuring sustainability and full development of its potentials for rapid improvement of the standard of living of rural dwellers.

Originality/value: An important deduction from the findings is that, apart from poor project spread across the state, the LBRBDA has performed abysmally very low since inception.