ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPACT OF INFRASTRUCTURAL FACILITIES ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX IN OKITIPUPA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, ONDO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study examined the spatial disparities of infrastructural facilities (Health, Road and Education) and human development indices (Level of Education, Health and Standard of Living) across the 13 wards in Okitipupa local government area, Ondo state, Nigeria with a view to correlate the strength of relationship between infrastructural facilities and human development index. The search made use of both primary and secondary datasets. The primary datasets was obtained through the administration of 400 copies of well-structured questionnaire among the 13 wards making up the Okitipupa LGA. Purposive random sampling technique was used in administering the questionnaire. Also, Hand-held GPS receiver was used to capture the locations of schools and health centres across the LGA. The secondary datasets include socio-economic record, enrolment record, mortality and birth records, population data, administrative map and major and internal roads within the LGA. The socio-economic and population records were obtained from Ondo State Bureau of Statistics while the enrolment data was gotten from Ondo State Ministry of Education. Also, mortality and birth data were obtained from Ondo State Primary Health Care Board. Administrative map of the study area was extracted from the Nigeria LGA shape-file while major and internal roads within the LGA was extracted from Google Earth satellite imagery. Simple statistics was performed on the socio-economic data, school enrolment data, mortality and birth data and on data collected through the questionnaire. This was used to derive the Human Development Index of each of the13 wards making up the LGA. All maps and spatial data were captured in the GIS platform for geospatial analysis. The data obtained from the administered questionnaire were coded and integrated in the GIS platform for geo-statistical analysis. Analyses was done in the ArcGIS platform to obtain the spatial distribution of the infrastructural facilities and the HDI across the 13 wards of the LGA. Nearest Neighbourhood Analysis (NNA) was also employed to examine the pattern of distribution while density analysis was used to analyse the spatial density of the infrastructural facilities. Ordinary Least Square VI (OLS) regression analysis was also performed on the geodatabase to examine the impact of the infrastructural facilities on the human development index in the study area and also to test the significance of the result of the analysis. Results obtained were referenced to the UN standard for Human Development. Results shows that the distribution pattern of schools and health centres across the LGA is clustered. This implies that a larger percentage of the population is disenfranchised from accessing these facilities. The highest density of schools per unit area in the LGA was found in Okitipupa II, Ilutitun II, and Ode-aye I. The result confirmed earlier results of concentration of schools around where settlements are more. The distribution of tarred roads within the LGA also confirmed earlier result of locating infrastructural facilities around where population is more as Okitipupa I and II have the highest number of tarred roads across the LGA. The results for the categorization of Human development Index (HDI) and its component indexes across the LGA show that Erinje(0.7260) and Okitipupa(0.7237) recorded the highest health index while Ode-Aye II(0.4292) and Igbotako II(0.4382) have lowest health index. The income index ranked highest in Okitipupa II (0.7808) while Ilutitun I (0.3485) recorded the lowest. The Education index is ranked highest between Igbotako II (0.6475) and Okitipupa II (0.7056) while Erinje (0.3932) and Ikoya/Oloto (0.3841) recorded the lowest. The overall mean HDI of the study area is 0.5128 which falls within the UN low developmental categorization of ≤0.5. The most developed ward among the sampled ward is Okitipupa II (with an HDI value of 0.7141) while the least is Ilutitun I which recorded an HDI value of 0.4133. The regression result of Ordinary Least Square (OLS) of the impact of the infrastructural facilities on human development showed that HDI is directly affected by infrastructure facilities in Okitipupa LGA. Among the infrastructural variables, level of income is found to exert the greatest positive effect on Human Development in the LGA. Electricity and level of road construction variables were found to influence HDI negatively. Other infrastructure variable exerting positive influence on HDI is the level of health facilities in the LGA while provision of good drinking water is found to be negatively associated VII with human development in the LGA. The effects of infrastructure variables on three individual indices of human development, namely, health index, education index, and income index showed that provision of health facilities and level of income are found to have positive effects on health index while provision of good drinking water and level of road construction are negatively associated with health index. Interestingly, health index has positive association with the components of infrastructural facilities. Education index also has a positive association with income level and negatively associated with other infrastructure variables but its association with component infrastructure facilities is positive. Provision of health facilities, level of income, and provision of good drinking water have positive impacts on income index while level of road construction and provision of electricity are negatively associated with income index but the component infrastructural facilities are positively associated with income index. It is noteworthy to state categorically that infrastructural facilities have significant impact on human development. This reconfirms with various researches–JICA (2010), Kusharjanto and Kim (2011), Mohanty et al., 2016), Sapkota (2014) and World Bank (1994) - that infrastructural development affect human development. All other individual components of HDI (health index, education index, and income index) are positively affected by infrastructural facilities in the study area. The level of income of an individual in the LGA has the strongest effect on HDI and its individual components. It could be inferred from the results that for a 1% change in the level of infrastructural facilities in Okitipupa LGA, there will be a corresponding 0.581% change in the level of human development.