Evaluation of local empowerment and environmental management project for rural development in Nigeria

International development agenda under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has recorded remarkable achievement in poverty reduction and uplifting the standard of living of the poor people throughout the developing countries. However the progress of poverty reduction was limited in Nigeria. The Local Empowerment and Environmental Management Project (LEEMP) was introduced as a new Community Driven Poverty Reduction Programmes under MDGs. This study aims to examine and evaluate the effectiveness of LEEMP and the factors that determine its performance. A total of 36 villages were selected through multistage sampling techniques in nine local government areas in Adamawa State of Nigeria.The samples selected for the study include 30 villages that implemented the infrastructure components projects of LEEMP and six villages that implemented economic components of LEEMP. The main data for the analysis was collected from household surveys covering 500 respondents for the evaluation of the infrastructure components projects and 300 respondents for the evaluation of the economic components projects. Apart from that, focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were also carried out with 42 stakeholders and six key informants respectively in five selected villages for deeper insights of the factors for ineffective participation and weakness in the implementation of LEEMP.The analysis for determining the impacts of LEEMP were based on the comparison of the changes that occurs to the targeted outcome before and after implementation of LEEMP using paired sampled t-test.The analysis of participation and the factors for the performances of LEEMP were based on descriptive analysis of the opinions of the respondents whereas data from focus group discussions and indepth interviews were analysed through conversational matrix and content analysis separately. The study found that the LEEMP improved existing rural infrastructures by 54% in achieving the targeted provision of the infrastructure components. Moreover LEEMP also shows progress in improvement in the local economy such as increased in crop production, livestock production, family income but not successful in improving the income beyond poverty level. There is positive correlation between the impact of infrastructure components and level of community participation. Generally the short fall is due to lack of community participation, low accountability of institutions, and high level of poverty and illiteracy of participants. This study suggests incorporating and empowering more the participating community in the implementation of LEEMP