The World Bank And Community Development: An Appraisal Of Local Empowerment And Environmental Management Project (Leemp) In Enugu State, Nigeria, 2004 - 2009

ABSTRACT

Community development has remained one of the major preoccupations of

various governments all over the world. In Nigeria, the rural areas, which

constitute over 70% of the country’s population and largely made up of poor

people, lack the basic infrastructural amenities required to meet basic human

needs. Consequently, government efforts over the years have been directed

at how to provide local communities with basic infrastructure as a means of

ameliorating their conditions in order to enhance self-reliance, increased

productivity, higher income, enhanced political participation, provision of

social services and promotion of economic growth. Since the efforts of various

Nigerian government regimes still fall short of achieving the desired

developmental objectives in this regard, the World Bank has been assisting

her under various programmes, to grapple with problems of poverty,

unemployment, infrastructural development, and paucity of social services.

One of such programmes is the Local Empowerment and Environmental

Management Project (LEEMP). This study evaluated the efforts of the LEEMP

on community development in Enugu State from 2004-2009 with a view to

appraising the level of performance achieved by LEEMP’s projects on

community development in Enugu state; the factors responsible for that level

of performance; and to proffer recommendations for improving LEEMP’s

development efforts in the State. Data for the study were generated from

both primary and secondary sources. The primary sources comprised of data

generated from questionnaires, interviews and observation of the 81 projects

located in 77 communities in the state. From the sampled communities 2321

respondents were selected using a combination of the stratified, purposive

and simple random sampling techniques to cover the various strata of the

communities. The secondary data comprised of information collected from

LEEMP working papers, books, journals, government publications and the

Internet. The Statistical Packages for Social Science in Windows (SPSS WIN)

version 15 using means, graphs, chi-square and t-test was employed in the

data analysis. The findings of the study revealed that the level of performance

achieved by LEEMP’s projects in Enugu state was significant on all areas the

intervention intended to affect the host communities. The study also revealed

that certain identifiable factors such as level of community cooperation and

participation, project funding, project personnel, intervention context, project

relevance to felt community needs, and favourable pre-intervention conditions

contributed significantly to the various project outcomes. Based on the

findings of the research, the study recommended that some variables such as

enhanced community cooperation and participation, adequate funding of

projects, employment of dedicated project personnel, enhanced intervention

context, project relevance to felt community needs, and favourable preintervention

conditions will significantly enhance project outcome if they are

positively managed.