Monitoring and Evaluation Systems in Local Government Development Projects: A Study of Makurdi Local Government Area, Benue State

This study assesses the application and effectiveness of monitoring and evaluation systems in local government development projects in Makurdi Local Government Area of Benue State, North Central Nigeria. Despite the availability of federal and state guidelines on project monitoring and evaluation, local government councils across Nigeria rarely maintain functional M and E systems, leading to poor project tracking, inability to identify implementation failures in real time, and limited documentation of development outcomes. Using a professional research design, data is collected from 90 respondents including local government project supervisors, M and E officers, contractor representatives, and beneficiary communities. The Logical Framework Approach and the Results-Based M and E Framework provide the conceptual grounding. Secondary data includes Benue State Ministry of Local Government project files, World Bank Nigeria governance assessment publications, and recent academic literature on development project monitoring in Nigeria. Descriptive statistics and process tracing methodology are applied. Findings are expected to reveal that most local government councils in Makurdi operate without structured M and E plans, relying instead on informal site visits and verbal reports that are insufficiently rigorous to capture project performance. Practical recommendations include adoption of a standardized local government project M and E toolkit, deployment of community monitors, and mandatory post-project impact evaluations for all contracts above a defined financial threshold. Keywords: Monitoring and evaluation, local government, development projects, Makurdi, Benue State.