An Evaluation of the Contributions of Development Partners in Reforming Governance Sector in Kaduna State with Focus on DFID Funded SPARC Program (2010-2015

Abstract

Institutional structural and processes reforms are contiguous to governance transformations throughout the history and phases of human political developments. In developing countries of Africa, institutional reforms have expropriated the desired attention necessary to guarantee growth and development. A paradigm shift was recently recorded in 2009 following a support gesture from the United Kingdom Department of International Development (UK-DFID) to provide technical support to federal and state governments including Kaduna state. The reforms target government institutions for the realization of maximum developmental goals and objectives. Our study evaluated the implementation of the reform programme to find out the extent to which it has strengthened governance institutions in Kaduna state from 2010 to -2015. We found some remarkable progress in the four thematic areas of policy and strategy, public financial management, public service management and monitoring and evaluation. These reforms are largely seen in the employment of some systems capability enhancement tools like Medium -Term Sector Strategy (MTSS), Human Resources Management Information System (HRMIS) and Budget Treasury Management Information System (BATMIS) as well as the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS). Limitations were however found in lack of political will to fully implement reform timeline, regime change, lack of succession planning, and mass sacking of workers. We therefore recommended among others strengthening government