ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPACTS OF CHANGE IN GOVERNMENT ON PUBLIC BUILDING PROJECTS PERFORMANCE IN EKITI STATE, NIGERIA.

Abstract

The construction projects are major tools through which politicians fulfill their campaign promises of infrastructural development to the electorates. The exit of each administration leave behind some uncompleted projects for the incoming administration. The constitutional causes of change in government that characterized democratic government and poor performance associated to public projects demands for an appraisal of performance of Public building projects. This research therefore appraised the impacts of change in government on the performance of public building projects in Ekiti State using forty five (45) uncompleted projects by each of the administration that governed the State since 1999 to 2014.The cost, time and projects participants performance of these selected public building projects were assessed through the use of unstructured interview and an archival data. Also the effects of the change in government were also assessed on all the project stakeholders and the possible measures for improving these performance were proffered. Data gathered were analyzed using frequency, percentile, correlation and regression analysis. The study revealed that out of forty five (45) projects assessed to have experienced change in government, all the 45 (100%) had time overrun with a range of 250% 1833.33% time variance, (27) were abandoned till date representing 60%, the remaining (18) projects representing 40% were completed with different time overrun ranges from 116.7%491.7%. Among these (18) projects only (4) were completed within budget, while the remaining (12) projects experienced cost overrun ranges between1- over 400million. Result of the research shows that the effect of change in government on the stakeholders varies due to the different roles they play in the execution of public building projects. The contractor’s mostly suffered termination of contract. While consultants and Subcontractor/supplier are mostly experienced non- payment of consultancy fees and contract sum respectively. The responses of the host community indicated a negative effect on their standard of living, this is also applicable to the end users /expected end users. The effects on client representatives is more of physiological effect as the expected level of experience on such project is limited and these is minimal when compared to other stakeholders involved. Therefore for performance of public building projects to improve under a constitutional change in government, legislation and implementation of policy known as (Operation No Abandonment of Projects with Sanctions (ONAPS) become necessary, inclusion of cost of associated political risk by the Quantity Surveyors in the contract document. Implementation of all these recommendations will enhance the performance of public building projects in Ekiti State under constitutional change in government.