Perception of rural communities in Akoko North West local government area of Ondo State, Nigeria, towards the Ikaram Millennium Village Project

Abstract

The Millennium Village Project (MVP) is designed to harness the progress of the time-bound Millennium Development Goals. This study aimed to assess the perception of the Ikaram Millennium Village Project by the residents of Akoko North West local government area of Ondo State. A descriptive cross-sectional study of 496 residents of five of the seven communities that make up the Ikaram MVP was done. The perception of the respondents were rated poor or good by scoring their responses to 8 validated questions. Chi square test was used to assess significant association. The mean age of the respondents were 42.20±17.1 years. Half were female (50.4%), 311 (62.7%) were married. The majority of the respondents (82.1%) reported a poor perception of the MVP. Among the Yorubas only 79 (17.1%) had good perception compared to 7 (46.7%) from other ethnic groups (p=0.003). Contributory factors to poor perception about the Ikaram MVP were the far location of the health facility from the community, lack of communication and community ownership of the project. For community orientated health projects to be successful community participation is important.