Impact of Project Planning, Monitoring And Evaluation on the Sustainability of the Millennium Village Project in Pampaida, Ikara Local Government Area of Kaduna State Nigeria

Abstract

The sustainability of a project refers to the capability of a project to retain its usage over the long term. The Millennium Village Project (MVP) in Pampaida was purposely initiated to alleviate over 70% of the populace from poverty. The study examined how project planning, monitoring and evaluation influenced its sustainability, adopting the participatory and the stakeholders’ theory with the involvement of donors, government, and the community people in achieving the set goals and objectives of the Project – poverty reduction. The study applied the mixed method research technique –qualitative leading and corroborated by quantitative. We selected 368 people from the community as respondents from the 28 settlements of Pampaida to provide us with the data through structured questionnaires, interviews, focused group discussions and systematic observations. The statistical tools used in the analysis were; simple percentages, frequency tables, mean, standard deviation, and the application of the SPSS version 26 for inferential statistics while using Linear Regression Technique to test the hypothesis. In the research, hypotheses were framed in null forms to address the objectives of the study and were tested statistically, which corroborated the use of thematic analysis of interviews and observations of the research. The study found that project planning, monitoring and evaluation were significant factors that positively affect the sustainability of MVP projects. Therefore, the study recommends that; the government prioritize effective, structured and comprehensive project planning to guide the project objectives. In terms of Project execution maintenance and support, feedback mechanism and capacity-building initiative, the community needs to establish committees to implement a robust and rigorous monitoring and evaluation system.