EFFECT OF COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES ON POVERTY ALLEVIATION AMONG RURAL FARM HOUSEHOLDS IN YEWA DIVISION OF OGUN STATE
Nigeria
as a land filled with milk and honey suffers from the menace of poverty.
Different questions have been asked to how poverty which is affecting the
economy can be reduced to minimum. Several Government bodies have been setup to
find a lasting solution to the problem striking the masses. However,it will be
expedient to know what poverty is all about and to know the meaning of
cooperative according to different scholars and join the two together to have a
clearer understanding of the purpose of the study.
According
to Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, Poverty is a state of being poor. It is
the inability of a household to generate adequate income for the maintenance of
the household.
Poverty
has become a pervasive National and Global issue resulting from a state of
short or long term deprivation and insecurity in basic human needs (Chambers,
1996; Mullen, 1996;Obadan, 2002). Poverty has also become a feature of the living conditions and life
situation of the vast majority of Nigerians. The incidence of poverty in
Nigeria was put at 28.8% in 1980, 46.3% in 1985, 42.7% in 1992 and 65.6% in
1996. In 2008, estimates from the National Bureau of Statistics put incidence
of poverty at 54.4% (Fakoya, Banmeke, Ashimolowo, Fapojuwo2010). Several
evidences have suggested that majority of the world’s poor live and work in the
rural area and that they would continue to do so in 2025 (IFAD, 2001).
(Oseni, 2007) defined poverty as a state of
involuntarily deprivation to which a person, household, community or nation can
be subjected topoverty is a condition in which one cannot generate sufficient
incomerequired to secure a minimum standard of living in a sustainable pattern.
Poverty in Nigeria is caused by lack of employment, high rate of illiteracy
among the citizenry, poor infrastructure, inadequate access to micro credit
facilities, mismanagement of public funds, bad governance, instability of the
governments and its policies. Poverty gives rise to many other serious social
problems, some of which, not only impose enormous economic and social costs
upon the non- poor and society in general, but also threaten the survival and
stability of the society. In these regards, the Federal Government of Nigeria
had designed several programmes aimed at alleviating poverty and improving the
living conditions of its people which include Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), Green
Revolution, Structural Adjustment Programme, Better Life Programme and Family
Support Programme, National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Directorate of
Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI), National PovertyEradication
Programme (NAPEP) and National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy
(NEEDS). These programmes bythe various governments of Nigeria were designed by
policy makers and targeted at poverty alleviation in Nigeria. Unfortunately,
the quality of life of majority of Nigerians had remained unenviable and
embarrassingly low, despite the huge budgetary allocations by these governments
to these poverty alleviation programmes (Orji, 2005). There is a need to
identify other means of addressing the serious damage caused by poverty to the
Nigerian society, attention should therefore be shifted to the use of self-help
using Cooperative organizations formed and administered by the people.
Cooperativeshave been dedicated to conducting business
in a way now being recommended as the most effective route to transformational
development: putting people in charge of their own destinies and helping them
bring services to their communities; increasing decision making, trust and
accountability through democratic participation; providing a profitable
connection to the private sector; building and protecting assets at the
community level; limiting the role of government; and working together to resolve
problems.
A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons
united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, as well as cultural
needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically controlled
enterprise (COPAC, 1999). A Co-operative is a group-based and members-owned
business that can be formed for economic and social development in any sector
(Ohio Co-operative Development Centres (OCDC) 2007). According to DFID (2005),
co- operatives have four main characteristics: first, they are formed by groups
of people, who have a specified need or problem. Secondly, the organization is
formed freely by members after contributing to its assets. Thirdly, the
organization formed, is governed democratically in order to achieve desired
objectives on equitable norms, and fourthly, it is an independent enterprise
promoted, owned and controlled by people to meet their needs. Cooperatives
provide self-employment through millions of worker-owners of production and
service cooperatives; financial cooperatives mobilize capital for productive
investment and provide people with secure institutions for the deposit of
savings; consumer cooperatives provide households with affordable goods and
services reducing the proportion of income usedfor basic living costs, and
similarly user-owned cooperatives such as housing, utility, health and social
care cooperatives provide affordable access to basic services.
Cooperative as socio-economic institutions through
their activities could be a potent tool for poverty alleviation particularly in
fighting poverty and unemployment. This could be in the area of agriculture,
provision of infrastructural facilities and education.
Therefore, in Yewa Division where the research
wascarried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the impact of
cooperative societies in alleviating poverty among rural households.
1.2. Problem Statement
Poverty
is seriously severe in rural areas where social services and infrastructures
are limited or not in existence. The greater number of those who live in rural
areas depends solely on agriculture for food and income, and a high proportion
of rural people suffer from malnutrition and other diseases related to poor
nutrition.
Rural
poverty tends to be evenly distributed in the country rather than concentrated
in specific geographical area. Rural infrastructure across has been long
neglected why investment in health, Education and Water supply have largely
been focused obn the cities. As a result, the rural household has extremely
limited access to services such as schools, health centers and about half of
the rural household population lacks access to save drinking water, limited
education opportunities and poor health perpetuate the poverty circle. The poor
tends to live in isolated villages that can become virtually inaccessible
during rainy season.
Therefore,
the situation is aggravated by the fact that many rural household are stark
illiterates, and also lack inadequate capital to start a business of their own.
On
the other hand,cooperatives
in Nigeria are still known to be bedevilled with problems including,lack of
capital, lack of access to credit facilities, poor management,misappropriation
of funds, etc. While efforts are being made by stakeholders ofcooperative in
Nigeria to remove and/or reduce these problems, there is anapparent consensus
that the need for adequate and sufficient knowledge of the roleof cooperatives
in poverty alleviation still exists. For example there is a need toidentify and
analyse in sufficient details those cooperative activities and functionsthat
bear directly on the economic empowerment of members, as well asidentifying
factors that could promote and enhance cooperative efforts in povertyreduction.
Unless these issues are known and appreciated, the emphasis oncooperative as a
poverty alleviating platform may continue to be unrealistic.
The
questions of interest in this study are;
i.
What are the socio-economic
characteristics of the respondents in the study area?
ii. What
is the incidence, depth and severity of poverty among the respondents?
iii. What
are the determinants of poverty among the rural households?
iv. What
are the influences of cooperative membership on poverty status of rural
households?
v. What
are the constraint affecting cooperative societies in alleviating poverty?
1.3 Objectives
of the Study
The
broad objective of the study is to access the importance of cooperative
societies in alleviating poverty among rural household.
The
specific objectives are to;
i.
examinethe socio-economic
characteristics of the respondents in the study area.
ii.
assessthe incidence, depth and severity
of poverty among the respondents.
iii.
examine the determinants of poverty
among the rural households
iv.
examinethe influence of cooperative
membership on poverty status of rural households.
v.
constraint affecting cooperative society
in alleviating poverty.
1.4 Justification
of the Study
From
time past, Nigerian government and the international agencies have introduced
measures in alleviating poverty, such programmes ranges from Structural
Adjustment Programme (SAP) in early 1980s; Directorate for Food Road and Rural
Infrastructure (DEFRRI). Therefore the study is aimed at the following
1) To
reveal how cooperative will further increase its role in poverty reduction and also
to convince policy makers that it is time to develop a national poverty
reduction policy through cooperative society.
2) To
the poor, to know how cooperative society works, which will go a long way in
assisting them to reduce poverty, by establishing Cooperative Societies.
3) To
the Federal Government, they can use this work as a standard in measuring the
effectiveness of cooperative societies. Hence, Government can through this work
know the appropriate steps to take in funding cooperative societies.
1.5 Plan
of the Study
This
research was divided into five chapters, Chapter one consist of introduction,
research problem; objective and justification. While chapter two consist
of literature review and conceptual
framework, chapter three consist of research methodology, sampling techniques,
method of data collection and method of data analysis. On the other hand,
chapter four consists of result and discussion and chapter five is the summary,
conclusion and recommendation.
EDITOR SOURCE: Effect Of Cooperative Societies On Poverty Alleviation Among Rural Farm Households
