IMPACT OF NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATION ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN ADAMAWA AND BORNO STATE

Abstract

Over the past decades, interest in sustainable development has grown significantly in various parts of the country. This underscores the need for development partners such as the NGOs to complement governments' activities in providing services to the people. Hence, NGOs have stepped in and have been operating side by side with the Nigerian government with a view to promoting sustainable development. The extent to which these NGOs have made impacts in the lives and well-being of their beneficiaries is the central focus of this paper. The indicators measuring sustainable development that was utilised in this paper are beneficiary participation, economic empowerments and antenatal care services. The Participatory Development theory was adopted as the theoretical tool of analysis in the study. Being a survey research, data were generated from both primary and secondary sources. The primary data were obtained through questionnaire while the secondary data were obtained from documentary evidence as well as official reports from the selected NGOs, grants received by the NGOs from different donors, official publications of the United Nations Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA). The population of the study were NGO beneficiaries comprising of religious, community, youths' and women leaders as well as NGO staff. The total population of the beneficiaries in the selected states is 239,775 out of which 400 were obtained using Taro Yamane formula and 12 NGO staff selected through purposive sampling technique. The descriptive statistics include simple percentage and cross
tabulation. The paper established that beneficiary participation constitute a significant component of project implementation by NGOs in the study areas as 83.2% of the respondents agreed. The study also revealed 41.4% of the respondents strongly agreed
that the economic empowerment schemes of NGOs have significantly improved the sources of income of their beneficiaries. However, more synergy and collaborations between the NGOs and government agencies are needed to increase coverage of
beneficiaries in economic empowerment programs. The study concludes that Nongovernmental Organizations have made impacts on sustainable development in Adamawa and Borno states. The study, therefore, recommended among others that,
efforts must be made to develop the capacities of the beneficiaries to further strengthen their participations in proposals development and other stages of the project life cycle.