Poor evaluation and monitoring have been identified as major factors militating against full budget implementation and project execution in Nigeria.

Speaking while declaring open a five-day training programme for training officers in the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, organised by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Zone C in Ilorin on Monday, the Kwara State Commissioner for the ministry, Mr Bode Ogunleye, said lack of project monitoring and supervision had also emboldened contractors to derail from contract specifications.

"Lack of evaluation and monitoring is a problem in terms of budget implementation and execution at federal and state government levels. Project monitoring has been a big problem because when contractors are given contracts and specification, they derail most of the time because there is lack of serious monitoring and supervision.

"But what obtains in Kwara State is that the state government has devised a means of not even leaving the job to the department of monitoring and evaluation alone. The governor tasked the Special Assistant on Budget and Monitoring in the way and manner he should monitor those projects so that they would not derail from the specification of the project budgeted for in 2014 budget.

"I want the federal and other state governments to emulate what the Kwara government is doing," he said.

The commissioner, however, said that the newly created monitoring and evaluation department in the state was still hampered by many challenges impacting negatively on the performance of the department.

He listed those challenges as "weak institutional and human capacity; absence of trained professional monitoring and evaluation staff in the state ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs)," adding that, "one of the first steps towards the successful implementation of the new monitoring and evaluation policy is to build the capacity of the existing staff in a result-based management. The training is highly essential to equip the monitoring and evaluation staff with relevant knowledge and skills needed to support the implementation of the new monitoring and evaluation policy across the state."