Impact of National Fadama Development Project III on Poverty Rate in Nigeria: A Case Study of Federal Capital Territory, Abuja

Abstract

The study examined the poverty rate in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, among those who benefited from the National Fadama Development Project III. The study adopted primary method of data analysis using purposive sampling and proportional allocation sampling techniques following Bowley (1926) in the selection of 413 respondents’ beneficiaries of Fadama III project in the distribution of questionnaire across all the 6 Area Councils of the FCT. In order to achieve the objective of the study, the Ordinary Least Square method of statistical analysis was used.  In contrast to beneficiaries funding capacity (NF1) and rural infrastructure investments (NF3), which are negatively signed and statistically insignificant in explaining the behaviour of beneficiaries' poverty level in the study area, the study found that beneficiaries' levels of training (NF2), project management (NF4), and productivity of user households (NF5) are statistically significant at the 5% level of significance. This indicates a positive relationship suggesting that, the establishment of Fadama III project has led to 31%, 27% and 15% improvement of (NF2), (NF4) and (NF5) in FCT, respectively. It was also established that the programme faces some challenges like crop yields and output supply, late disbursement of counterpart funds, herdsmen clashes, and politicization of the programme. The study recommends that subsequent poverty and agricultural programmes should take the issue of improvement in agriculture through technologies thoughtful in order to increase crop yields and output supply, as this will increase their income and productivity, and reduce the number of poor people in the FCT.