Assessment Of Impact Of SPDC's Sponsored Agricultural Intervention On The Well-Being Of Beneficiaries In Niger Delta Communities Of Nigeria

Abstract

The goal of every development project is to make impact on the benefitting communities. This makes necessary the assessment of impact on the people's well-being after the completion of such projects. The study assessed the impact of Shell Petroleum Development Company's sponsored agricultural intervention on the well-being of members of the benefitting communities. Specifically, the paper examined the background characteristics of the beneficiaries, determined the performance level of the agricultural intervention and assessed the impact of the intervention's effectiveness on the well-being of the respondents. The study used primary data gathered through a structured questionnaire. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to: first, purposively select sixteen communities in three Niger Delta states where SPDC carry out their operations. Second, three persons were randomly selected from six, in each of the projects. This gave a total of forty-eight beneficiaries who were the respondents for this study. The result revealed that, 89.6% of the respondents affirmed that SPDC's agricultural intervention was well funded but from the composite index (CI) analytical procedure used, the magnitude of performance was low, having a performance index of 0.39 which is equivalent to 39%. Majority of the respondents expressed dissatisfaction on having access to some basic needs of life such as shelter, food and clothing as a result of agricultural intervention therefore, impact on well-being was rated as not exceeding 39.9% and this was regarded as a low level of impact on the well-being of the respondents. It was concluded that the intervention will only affect the people's well-being positively if performance is effective. Therefore, SPDC should re-strategize its community development implementation effort by boosting performance through training and monitoring, so as to bring about visible changes in the well-being of the community members.