EFFECT OF PARTICIPATION IN COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT ON RURAL LIVELIHOOD ENHANCEMENT IN NORTH WEST, NIGERIA

The study was conducted to assess the effect of Participation in Community and Social Development on rural Livelihood enhancement in North West, Nigeria. Multistage sampling techniques were used to select CSDP beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries for the study. Data were collected from a total of 360 respondents using structured questionnaire. Data obtained was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The result showed that the age of the majority of respondents fell between 29-38 years for the beneficiaries and 39-48 years for the non-beneficiaries. Majority of the respondents were Harvard Research and Publications International June 30, 2020 Vol. 12 No. 1 ISSN: 0196 – 3488 JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE AND AGRICULTURAL TECH.


INTRODUCTION
Approaches to development have been changing in recent years to reflect a new paradigm that emphasizes sustainability, institutional change and participatory learning process which promotes capacity building and empowerment of local people.
The participation of local people in planning and managing their own development is a means of safeguarding their interest in the development process. By this, people decide their own priorities for the development and efficient use of their scarce resources which are competing for many alternative uses. They also exercise control over their own economic, social and married (80.28%) from the pooled data and were male (81.11%). Approximately, 56.67% had one form of education or the other with beneficiaries more distributed in formal education. The major occupation for both beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries was farming (69.17%). With regards to CSDP participation, majority (85.6%) of the beneficiaries participated in project planning stage, 65% in project preparation stage, 71.6% participated in project implementation stage while only 61.7% participated in project monitoring and evaluation stage. Participation level was rated high as majority (47.78%) of the beneficiaries participated in at least ten out of sixteen project cycles. Probit analysis showed that sex, marital status, education, monthly income and work experience were statistically related to the decision to participate in CSDP by the respondents. The double difference values was observed to be ₦92, 981.7 implying that productive assets increased more across the beneficiaries in comparison to the nonbeneficiaries in the course of time. Crop farming (36.7%), cattle trading (28.3%) and livestock farming (26.9%) where the major livelihood activities of the respondents as indicated from the pooled data. Improvement in living standard, community cohesion, increased school enrolment, reduction in water borne diseases and reduction in the distance covered to school and health centers were some of the benefits beneficiaries derived from CSDP as a result of their participation. Among the major challenges facing the beneficiaries while participating in CSDP includes high cost of materials, complex protocol, payment of counterpart funds and abandoned projects. Others were lack of professional medical personnel, poor maintenance culture and possibility of elite culture.
The study concludes that CSDP is promising and therefore needs to be sustained. It is therefore recommended among others that CSDP and other non-governmental organizations should encourage nonbenefiting communities to participate in the project through adequate sensitization and outreaches. ultural developments. Community participation in development activities was defined by Marsela (2015) as the process by which individuals, families or communities assume responsibility for their own welfare and develop a capacity to contribute to their own and the community development; it is an active process whereby beneficiaries influence the direct and execution of development. It is regarded as one of the cornerstone for good governance. Community participation helps to c enhance accountability, transparency and ensure sustainability of development initiatives. According to Udu and Onwe (2016), over 80% of the population of developing countries resides in the rural community. For this reason, community development efforts ought to be geared towards improving the living standard of the mass of the low-income population residing in rural areas and making the process of their development self-sustaining. In support of the above statement, Oyesola, (2013) also reported that close to 80% of the population in Nigeria live in rural areas and are directly or indirectly involved in the use of land resources but majority of these rural dwellers are facing several problems, which reduces their productivity. Some of these problems include environmental constraints, infrastructural deficiencies, marketing problems, and technological constraints, institutional constraints, high cost of labour, inadequate agricultural incentive and lack of sustainable rural development programmes. This understanding, informed the community development efforts of successive governments in Nigeria targeted in the rural communities. However, most of the community development efforts failed to yield the desired results due to such factors as lack of background studies aimed at understanding the social and demographic characteristics of their target communities and groups, literacy level, pervasive poverty prevalent in those communities, hunger and disease, absence of infrastructure which improves the quality of life such as potable water, electricity and good feeder roads to mention but a few. In view of the foregoing, this was carried and achieved the following key objectives: i. Describe the socio-economic characteristics of CSDP beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in the study area. ii.
Find out the levels of participation in CSDP among the beneficiaries in the study area. iii.
Determine the influence of socio-economic characteristics of beneficiaries on their participation in CSDP. iv.
Investigate the effect of CSDP participation on the livelihood assets of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in the study area.
v. identify the common livelihood activities of CSDP beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in the study area vi.
Know the benefits derived by beneficiaries from CSDP participation in the study area. vii.
Investigate the major challenges to the effective participation of beneficiaries in the CSDP.

METHODOLOGY
The study was conducted in three States namely Katsina, Kebbi and Zamfara of North West zone, Nigeria. The North West region is made up of seven States namely Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara. The North West zone is located between latitude 9 0 10 N and 13 0 50 N and longitude 3 0 35E and 9 0 00 E and it covers an area of about 102, 535 km 2 (Yakubu, 2018) representing 18% of the country's total land area. The zone has a combined projected population of 52, 349, 857.67 million at 3.3% growth rate (National Population Commission, 2018).The study area has international boundaries to the north and west with Niger Republic and on the southwest with Benin Republic. The elevation of the study area is between 250 and 350 meters above sea level. Resistant crusts of laterites and ironstones characteristically cap the hills in this area. The river system represents the principal drainage network in this region (Bako, 2016). The vegetation of the zone consists of Northern Guinea Savannah and Sudan savannah and experience low rainfall of usually less than 1000mm and the prolonged dry season (6-9 months) sustains fewer trees and shorter grasses of about 1.5-2m and few stunted trees hardly above 15m. The vegetation has undergone severe destruction in the process of clearing land for the cultivation of important economic crops such as cotton, millet, maize and wheat (Yakubu, 2011). The mean average temperature range from 18.3 0 C to 28.3 0 C. However, maximum daytime temperatures are for most of the year generally under 40 0 C (104.0 0 F) and the dryness makes the heat bearable. The warmest months are March to April when daytime temperatures can exceed 40 0 C (110.0 0 C). The rainy season is from May to October during which showers occur. From late October to February, during the cold season, the climate is dominated by the Harmattan wind blowing Sahara dust over the land. The dust dims the sunlight, thereby lowering temperatures significantly and also leading to the inconvenience of dust everywhere in houses (Bako, 2016). The zone is basically an agrarian society with over 80% of the population involved in one form of animal and or crop farming or the other. They produce such crops as millet, guinea corn, maize, rice, potatoes, cassava, groundnuts, beans, wheat, sugarcane, cotton and vegetables for cash which include garlic, onions, pepper and tomatoes among others. Local crafts such as blacksmithing, weaving, dyeing, carving and leather works also plays an important role in the economic life of the people. The area is also one of the fish producing areas of the country (Bako, 2016). North Western Nigeria comprises of seven States namely Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara. However, this study targeted Katsina, Kebbi, and Zamfara States. They were the States that have benefited from the activities of the CSDP. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select the sample for the study. The first stage was the purposive selection of the three existing senatorial zones in the selected States to ensure effective coverage and representation of communities. The second stage was the selection of one (1) Local Government Area (LGA) from each of the senatorial zones using simple random sampling technique, thus giving a total of nine LGAs. The third stage involve the selection of two benefiting communities purposively based on the presence of fully completed and functioning projects from each LGAs participating in CSDP. In addition, equal numbers of non-benefiting communities were also selected as control for estimation of counterfactual to give a total of 36 communities. The fourth and final stage involved random selection of 10 members of Community Development Associations (CDOs) from each of the 36 communities giving a total of 360 members which constituted the sample size for the study. In order to achieve the objectives of this study both primary and secondary data were used for the study. Primary data were obtained with the aid of structured questionnaire administered in November-December, 2018 by trained enumerators. The questionnaire was tested so that the interviewers can gain familiarity with the questionnaire and provided an opportunity to apply and review the method. The focus was on assessing how respondents understand the questions and to identify any problems encountered in providing answers. Proposed changes were made and incorporated into the final questionnaire. The instruments were used to generate information on the socio-economic characteristics of the CSDP beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, levels of participation in CSDP, influence of socio-economic factors of the beneficiaries on their participation in CSDP, effect of CSDP on the rural livelihood assets of beneficiaries, common livelihood activities and the challenges to effective participation in CSDP. Information of the benefits derived by the beneficiaries in CSDP participation was also obtained. The secondary data dwell on past works and reports, theses, journal articles, bulletins, newspapers and text books.
For the purpose of achieving the objectives of this research, data for this study were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential Statistics (Probit regression and Double difference Estimator). Descriptive Statistics such as frequency counts, percentages, means and standard deviations were used to achieve objectives (i), (ii), (v), (vi) and (vii) which described the socio-economic characteristics of CSDP beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries, examined the levels of participation in CSDP among the beneficiaries, examined the common livelihood activities of CSDP beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in the study area, identified the benefits derived from CSDP by the beneficiaries and identified the major challenges to the effective participation of beneficiaries in the CSDP respectively. Probit Regression Model was used to achieve objective iii which determined the influence of the socio-economic characteristics of beneficiaries on their participation in CSDP. A beneficiaries' decision to participate in CSDP is influenced by many socio-economic factors. The Probit model was used to analyze those factors influencing CSDP participation of beneficiaries. The decision to participate in CSDP is discrete and it takes a value of 1 if beneficiaries participate and 0 otherwise. Drawing from Von Braun and Immink (1994); Goletti (2005); Ohen et.al. (2013) the explicit form of the probit modelis expressed as: Y= 1 +X 1 + 2 X 2 + 3 X 3 + 4 X 4 +……………+ 7 X 7 +ɛ ………………………..1 Where: Y= Binary response defined as 1 if the respondents participates and 0 if otherwise = Estimated parameters X1= Sex (1= male, 0= female) X2= Age (Number of years) X3= Marital Status (1= married, 2= single, 3= others) X4= Educational level (Years spent in school) X5= Household size (Number of persons in family) X6= Monthly income (Naira) X7= Working experience (years spent working) 0= intercept ɛ= Error term Double Difference Estimator was used to achieve objective iv, i.e. to determine the effect of participation in Community and Social Development Project on livelihood assets. The double difference method is a standard programme evaluation tool used to measure potential programme impact (Verner and Verner 2005). The double difference in a regression framework can be written as: Y ij = a + DDT i t j + T i + t j + u ij …………………. beneficiaries' socioeconomic characteristics is presented in table 1 shows that 33.8% of the beneficiaries were between the ages of 29-38 years, while the same age bracket was 25% for the non-beneficiaries. The mean age of the beneficiaries was 39 years while that of the non-beneficiaries were 35 years. Therefore both the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries were averagely young irrespective of their status in CSDP. Although nonbeneficiaries were, on average, slightly younger than their counterparts. The result implies that both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries were of middle age and within the agricultural productive age range of 30-50 years quoted by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO, 1997;2005). The beneficiaries were found to be matured to make rational decisions affecting their socio-economic wellbeing in their various communities.
This is in consonance with Bzugu et.al. (2005) who noted that younger persons participated more in agricultural and community development activities.
Community and Social Development Projects targets male and female as well as vulnerable groups of the community. The result revealed that 79.44% and 20.56% of the beneficiaries were males and females respectively, while 82.78% and 17.22% of the non-beneficiaries were males and females respectively. This implies that majority of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries were males which could be attributed to the current practice of purdah (women in seclusion) as the people in the area are predominantly Muslims. In Hausa culture also, men are more likely than women to participate in activities of projects like the CSDP which involve interaction with strange men. However, the finding revealed that there were more females among the beneficiaries than with the nonbeneficiaries. The result was in agreement with the findings of Jonathan (2014) who found that 78.6% and 21.4% of CSDP beneficiaries were male and female respectively. The study further revealed that 86.67% and 6.67% of the beneficiaries were married and single respectively while 73.89% and 16.67% of the nonbeneficiaries were also married and single respectively. This could be attributed to the culture of the people in the area, which encourages early marriage. It could also be due to struggle to meet the needs of their families.
Only 6.66% and 9.44% of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries had other forms of marital status such as divorced or widowed. However, it can be readily seen that, irrespective CSDP status, majority of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries were married. This implies that the marital status of beneficiaries who benefited from the CSD Project did not differ markedly from those that did not benefit. This finding depicts that the beneficiaries were people that have family responsibilities which could be made easier to discharge through access to infrastructure like water, schools, health centers, etc. that are supported by CSDP. This is in line with the findings of Girei et.al. (2015) in their study on Impact Evaluation of Rural Health Infrastructure Sub sector of the Community and Social Development Project in Adamawa State. On educational level, four forms of education were observed among the CSDP beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, these were primary, secondary, tertiary or no formal education. Findings from the study in table 2 further show that 23.89% and 18.33% of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries had secondary education respectively. Also 27.78% of the beneficiaries had tertiary education while only 17.78% of the non-beneficiaries had tertiary education. These results shows that rural people in the study area actually valued education and it further confirms that the beneficiaries were sufficiently enlightened so as to appreciate the importance of involvement and participation in community project delivery. Also the result conforms to the studies of Fawole and Tijani, (2012) and Adesida and Akunola, (2015) that high literacy level can enhance participation and better understanding of any initiative programme. However, 36.67% and 50% of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries stood as those without formal education respectively. Non-formal education in this research consisted of adult literacy and Qur'anic education.
Result of the study shows that 42.2% and 56.11% of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries had household size of 1-5 persons respectively. According to the results 31.7% and 23.34% of the beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries had household size of 6 -10 persons respectively while only 5.6% of the beneficiaries had more than 20 members. The mean household size was about 8 for the beneficiaries of CSDP and about 6 for the nonbeneficiaries. This shows that CSDP beneficiaries have relatively large household size than the non-beneficiaries and it may not be unconnected to the common practice of polygamy and extended family systems in the study area. This agrees with Thomas et.al. (2018) findings that the average household size of market participants was 8 people.
The occupational distribution of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries shows that they had five primary occupations. They were farmers, traders, public servants, and artisan and agro processors.  Table 2 shows that majority of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries were into farming as primary occupation with non-beneficiaries of CSDP being more distributed within the category than their counterparts. However, among those reported on the other categories (Trading, Public service, and artisan), the beneficiaries were proportionally higher than their counterparts.
The result in table 2 shows that 63.89% of the beneficiaries of CSDP and 74.44% of the non-beneficiaries were into farming while 18.89% and 10.56% of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries respectively were public servant. Some 11.11% and 8.89% of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries were into trading and only few were artisan. The findings disagree with Aderinoye-Abdulwahab et.al. (2015) who reported that the major occupation for income generation in communities was trading on non-farm produce (39.8%). Also the fact that most of the beneficiaries were farmers means that they are based in rural areas where there is serious lack of functional infrastructure such as roads, schools, hospitals etc. This lack of infrastructure might have motivated them to seek the assistance of the CSDP in providing some of these much needed infrastructure. Table 2 showed that majority of the beneficiaries (73.9%) had a monthly income of between ₦10,000 -₦50,000 slightly below the nonbeneficiaries with 77.2%. About 9.4% and 6.7% of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries had a monthly income of between ₦51,000-₦90,000 respectively, while 10.6% and 16.1% of the beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries had less than ₦10,000 monthly income respectively. Very few (1.1%) of the beneficiaries had a monthly income of ₦171,000 and above. The mean income for the beneficiaries was ₦34,141.67 while nonbeneficiaries were ₦24,775. The result supports the findings of Okereke-Ejiogu et.al. (2015) who found the mean monthly income of participants to be ₦38,268.52. This implies that the beneficiaries earn some money at the end of the month and this could encourage their participation in community development projects like CSDP as they can afford to pay the levies if such need arises. Community participation is very important tool for developmental process in any country. It was observed that CSDP beneficiaries in the study area participated in the sixteen basic stages of the CSDP project cycle. Table 3 shows the distribution of beneficiaries according to the stages of CSDP project cycle they were engaged in. The revealed that the beneficiaries participated more in project planning stage, project implementation stage than in project preparation and monitoring and evaluation stages. Results showed that majority (85.6%) of the beneficiaries participated in project planning stage with 23.9% participated in project identification, 27.8% in project selection and 33.9% in project need assessment. The high participation in the Project Planning Stage could be attributed to sensitization and awareness creation carried out by the Community and Social Development Project agencies in the study area and also the Participatory Rural Appraisal method employed in assessing the needs of the communities. Planning stage takes into consideration the interest of the different segments of the communities (men, women, youth, elderly and vulnerable persons) not just at the implementation stage hence the highest participation.

Result in
It was also observed from the result that 65% of the beneficiaries were involved in project preparation stage, of which 28.9% participated in counterpart contribution, 16.7% in the decision on the scope of micro project, 11.1% participated in consultation with technical or professionals while 8.3% were involved in preparation of community development plan.
The study shows that beneficiaries' participation in the project preparation stage had lesser participation than the project planning stage. The only component of the project preparation stage that had high percentage (28.9%) and ranked second of beneficiaries 'participation was the community counterpart contribution. Responses during the interview sessions revealed more of participation of CPMC members at this stage than the generality of the community members. Consultation with technical persons/professionals was said to be the responsibility of the CPMC members who were meant to report back to the community members during community general meetings as a form of feedback mechanism.
In project implementation stage, a total of 71.6% of the beneficiaries were involved out of which 19.4% participated in community meetings, 14.4% participated in the selection of project site, 16.7% participated in labour contribution at project site, 12.8% in procurement of project materials and only 8.3% were participated in community project management committee training. This revealed that the communities are responsible for financial management, procurement and other implementation aspects of the projects, and they are only supported by the state agency (SA), LGA and other relevant experts where the communities deem it necessary. Monitoring is concerned with the continuous and routine measures enshrined to ensure that activities required for successful completion are adopted and followed. Labour contribution was ranked 8 th and second component In the context of this study, levels of participation of beneficiaries in Community and Social Development Project in the study area fall into three categories, namely: Low, Medium and High based on the frequency of participation in different stages of participation. Table 3 reveals that 16.67% of the beneficiaries had low participation having involved in less than 5 levels of activities. Majority of the CSDP beneficiaries (47.78%) had high participation having participated in more than 10 out of 16 levels of activities while 35.56% had medium participation having involved 6-10 levels of CSDP activities. Socio-economic factors influencing beneficiaries' participation in community and social development project Probit analysis was conducted to determine the influence of socioeconomic characteristics of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries on their participation in CSDP. The result is presented in Table 4. The ratio statistics indicated by chi-square statistics are highly significant (p< 0.0000). This suggests that the model has a strong explanatory power. The pseudo R 2 is 0.0686 meaning that the regressors were able to explain 69% of CSDP participation in the study area. It was observed that out of seven independent variables considered for analysis, five were significant. The significant factors included the sex, marital status, level of education, monthly income and work experience. Sex was positively and significantly related to the decision to participate in CSDP by beneficiaries at 1% level of probability; this implies that respondents who were male are more likely to participate in CSDP in the study area compared to women. This observation is consistent with the findings of Abdul-Hanan and Anang (2018) and Thomas et.al. (2018). the reason for this finding is that in a typical rural setting, household heads are usually males who are the decision-makers in terms of access to resources and participation in programmes. Women often need the permission of their husbands to participate in programmes thus constraining their participation rates. The hypothesis is therefore rejected for this variable. Marital status was significantly related to the decision to participate in CSDP by beneficiaries at 5% level of probability; this implies that beneficiaries that have family responsibilities are more likely to participate in CSDP than other respondents. The result also showed that level of education had a negative coefficient (-.1952248) and significant at 10 percent level of probability. It should be recalled that a negative sign on the coefficient implies that as level of education increases, perceived level of participation of CSDP decreases. Similarly, a positive sign indicates that with a unit increase in a particular variable there is also an increase in the perceived level of participation in CSDP within the study area. This implies that the higher the level of education of the respondents, the less the probability of participation in CSDP activities. Education decrease of Participation correlate with the report by Sani (2018) said there could be cases that educated households have the high chance of engaging themselves in other non-farm related activities such as sideline business, involvement in the administration that leave them with little time to participate in community development activities. The result is in conformity with findings of Adeyemo and Kayode (2012) who found that education (r=-2.641; P<0.00) has significant but negative coefficient with level of sustainability of community projects within the study area. Monthly income was a significant factor influencing participation in the CSDP programme. This implies that people with relatively higher income are more likely to participate in CSDP in the rural areas. The reason might be, those with low income are very much busy looking for what to eat and therefore may not necessarily have time to partake in the activities of CSDP. The probit model results show that working experience was significantly associated with the probability of CSDP participation. This shows that experienced people were more likely to participate in CSDP relative to unexperienced ones. Our result here is plausible and expected. More experienced house heads have overtime, developed some understanding of programmes that can help to improve their socio-economic wellbeing. The result is in agreement with the findings of Udo, (2014) who underlined that working experience among other factors have influence in programme participation in Nigeria. However, age and household size was inversely related to participation since the value of their coefficient was found to be (.002832 and .006075) and was not statistically significant (0.856 and 0.870) at either 1% or 5% level of probability. It is therefore shows that the age and household size of the respondents have no influence on participation in the CSDP activities. It was hypothesized that beneficiaries' socio-economic factors have no influence on CSDP participation. The finding showed that sex with z value of (0.007), marital status (0.024), education (0.064), monthly income (0.024) and work experience (0.044) had significantly influenced beneficiaries' participation at 1%, 5%, 10%, 5% and 5% level of probability respectively. It is therefore concluded that socio-economic factors have influence on beneficiaries' participation in the CSDP; hence, the null hypothesis is hereby rejected. 0.0000 ***, **, * significant at 1%, 5% and 10% probability respectively.
Distribution of beneficiaries based on the challenges experienced in CSDP participation Objective iv was to identify the challenges experienced by the beneficiaries in CSDP participation. As revealed in table 5, majority of the beneficiaries (52.2%) complained that high cost of materials was their major challenge during the implementation of the project. The CPMC were given the mandate to award contract and source materials locally based on the budget approved by the CSDP agency. The price of the materials were most of the time go high as against the approved unit price. Next in ranking is the challenge of complex protocol as reported by 48.3% of the beneficiaries as participating communities have to undergo series of protocol before partaking into the programme. The result is in consonance with the findings of Adeyemo et.al. (2014) who stated some protocol the community undergo, that community members have to be mobilized and sensitized, groups have to be formed and legally registered, group officers have to be elected and bank account have to be opened if not already in place. Additionally, Participatory Rural Appraisal have to be conducted for need assessment, Local Development Plans have to be drawn, submitted and approved. Counterpart fund of at least 10% also have to be paid before possible disbursement of funds for project implementation. These listed conditions requires significant time and therefore seen as a challenge by most beneficiaries. Inability of the beneficiaries to contribute to the levies placed on them towards the provision of project counterpart fund and other important developmental activities was another challenge reported by 38.9% of the beneficiaries. The result are in tandem with the findings of Adejoh (2015) who reported financial constraints as challenge affecting women participation in CSDP in Kogi State. About 38.3% of the beneficiaries reported slow decision making process as a challenge facing communities regarding CSDP. The community have to draw community development plan (CDP). The CDP is a comprehensive community plan for development activities within a community and contains a portfolio of micro-projects. Once the SA approves a CDP, the micro projects would be implemented one after the other in accordance with approved plan. Thus, unless the first micro project selected for implementation is successfully completed, grants shall not be released by the SA for the others. The CDP will then be submitted to LGDO who the recommend to LGRC for approval. This takes time and delay the approval. The study also identified other factors such as abandoned project and possibility of elite capture as challenges faced by communities regarding CSDP as reported by 35.6% and 22.8% of the beneficiaries respectively. Some project were abandoned due to financial constraints and sometimes washed away by rains in the case of road project. The elite who acted as a threat to hijacked community project capitalize on the perceived weaknesses of some community members to pay certain fees and thereafter act as lords over them. Poor maintenance culture as reported by about 23.9% of the beneficiaries was seen as a problem being faced by communities. The beneficiaries explained that active participation diminishes immediately after project implementation. Even though committees are set up at various stages to ensure the sustainability of the project, community members are not so cooperative in that regard. The levies charged for the maintenance of the project are not paid. Finally, lack of qualified medical personnel was reported by 17.8% of the beneficiaries as a challenge, as most medical personnel deployed to CSDP clinics are not professionally qualified to attend to serious issues of health concern.

Conclusion and recommendations
The combined influence of socio-economic variables (Sex, marital status, level of education, monthly income and work experience) have made positive and significant contributions to beneficiaries' participation in CSDP activities at 1%, 5% and 10% level of probability. However, age and household size of the beneficiaries were not significant. The result revealed that the beneficiaries participated more in project planning stage, project implementation stage than in project preparation and monitoring and evaluation stages. Beneficiaries were also found to have high participation in CSDP activities. High cost of materials, complex protocol and payment of counterpart funds were identified as the major challenges to the effective participation in CSDP. It is recommended that CSDP and non-governmental organizations should encourage non-participating communities to participate through adequate sensitization and outreaches. Female operation officers and facilitators should be recruited in the future for project of this nature. This would enhance greater participation of women in the project. Communities should expedite actions in the payment of counterpart fund so as to attract many more projects in the community. Disbursement of funds for the project should be timely to avoid unnecessary rise in the price of working materials.