ASSESSMENT OF INTERNATIONAL DONOR’S REFORM PROGRAMME AND FUNCTIONALITY OF WATER, SANITATION AND HYGIENE PROJECTS IN OSUN STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study assessed international donor’s reform programme and functionality of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) projects in Osun State, Nigeria. This is the motivation for goal 6 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seeks to ensure safe drinking water and sanitation for all, focusing on the sustainable management of water resources. The sector had undergone international reform programmes and it is expected that such programme will have effect on the functionality and sustainability of WASH project in Nigeria. This study was undertaken to assess the influence of project management practices on the international donor reform programme and functionality of WASH project in Osun State, Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive research design to know how the implementation of international donor reform programme influence the functionality of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) project in the study area. The study was conducted among project staff of the State level institutions, LGA level institutions and community level institutions. They accounted for 20, 30 and 6750 respectively, which summed up to a population size of 6,800. A sample of 414, which comprise the proportion of each of the stakeholders namely State level, LGA level and community level institutions served as sources of primary data which was through questionnaire administration. Assessing the implementation level of WASH reform programme in the study area, the outcome of the study revealed that the level of implementation is generally very good (3.46 on a scale of 1 to 5). It was revealed that functionality attributes or measures were very poor before the implementation of the reform programme (0.09) but averagely very good after the implementation of the programme (3.50). Institutional factor provided a very high support for the sustainability of WASH project, while technological factor promoted the sustainability of WASH project in a moderately high manner. Both environmental and social factors provided slightly high support for the project whereas economic or financial factor is of a very low contribution. The model showing the relationship between WASH reform programme and sustainability factors in the study area iii shows that the later moderately predict the former to the tune of 59.6 per cent. It further shows that 28.2 per cent change in WASH reform programme is caused by the factors with only social factor making a unique statistically significant contribution ( = 0.493 P<0.05). Lastly, the testing of the hypothesis revealed that there is significant difference in the functionality of WASH project before and after the reform programme. On the other hand, sustainability factors significantly influenced WASH reform programme in the study area. The research work thus recommended systemic evaluation of sustainability factors for holistic perspectives to decisions regarding “WASH sustainability factors”.