Reducing Unemployment Through Co-operative Movement
CHAPTER ONE
Objective of the Study
- To identify the role played by co-operative societies in reducing unemployment.
- To examine the problems facing co-operative societies in reducing unemployment.
- To investigate the benefit of co-operative societies to members.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
As global economic meltdown continue to affect the livelihood of people around the world negatively, which has resulted in almost half of the world population living on less than two dollars a day, alleviating this has become a major challenge to the human society. This phenomenon was as a result of a state of short or long-term deprivation and insecurity in basic human needs.
World Bank (2000) described this as poverty and sees it as a multi-dimensional phenomenon, with various universally accepted definitions for its economic dimension centers on nature and level of material deprivations which afflict the poor, and distinguishes them from the non-poor. Sweetman (2002) also described it as lack of income and productive resources sufficient to ensure a sustainable livelihood without hunger and malnutrition, ill-health, limited or lack of access to education and other basic services, increased morbidity and mortality from illness, homelessness and inadequate housing, unsafe environment and social discrimination and exclusion. It is also characterized by lack of participation in decision-making and in civil, social and cultural life.
Poverty in Nigeria has given 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 Governments of Nigeria at different levels and time have designed and implemented numerous programmes targeted at alleviating poverty and improving the living conditions of the people which will bring about a sustainable national development and this include Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), Green Revolution(GR), Structural Adjustment Programme(SAP), Better Life for Rural Women and Family Support Program me(FSP), National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI), National Poverty Eradication Program me(NAPEP) and National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy(NEEDS), Millennium Development Goals, Sure-P, Vision 2020 etc. Unfortunately, the quality of life of major Nigerians had remained unenviable and embarrassingly low, despite the huge budgetary allocations by different levels of governments to these poverty reductions and sustainable national development programs(Orji,2005).
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research design
The research design used in this study is survey research method. This survey research method is the descriptive method in educational research. The researcher used this descriptive research design to obtain the actual information on the role of co-operative society on poverty alleviation.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
This chapter deals with the analysis of the data collected. The statistics technique employed for this study is the frequency count and simply percentage.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Summary
It is evidence that cooperatives society have significantly contributed to wealth redistributions, poverty reductions and sustainable development from human livelihood perspective. It is obvious that reduction of poverty is all about improving poor conditions and generation of a sustainable command of welfare. It is proved that cooperative is community business that can potentially support breaking down the vicious cycle of poverty.
Given that cooperatives is open to all persons without ethnic, class or professional biases most especially rural settings offered employment opportunity for both members and non-members alike. The incomes generated are used to meet household needs and also to ensure income- generating capacity of individuals by investing in educational, health requirement and socio well-being of individuals and household.
Cooperatives also offer emergency and instant loan to members to solve unexpected problems which have actually been acting as fall back for members to quickly respond to unanticipated socio-economic problems like sickness, an accident, food shortage, crop failure, financial snag among others which have the potential of disrupting livelihood. Cooperatives are therefore becoming the preferred mechanism or tools for mediating people access to major resources that they usually utilized to participate in other activities through which they earned a living. Bouman (1995), opined that Cooperative societies create employment opportunities in major three ways starting from the view of the personnel directly employed to run the ventures of different levels of the societies and the various government and non- governmental agencies providing support services to the cooperatives e.g ministries, departments and cooperatives college, to the offer of self-employment it gives to members whose participation in economic activities substantially guarantees decent income, as well as indirect employment base on the spillover effect of cooperatives activities on non-members whose income come only from the transactional relationship with the cooperative ventures.
Conclusion
It is evident that there has been steady increase in numbers and memberships of cooperative societies over time. This development is achieved as awareness that poverty alleviation is now considered as not only the responsibility of government alone but even for cooperative societies. Importantly, the successful activities of cooperative societies towards poverty alleviation have continued to serve as a means of livelihood for its members.
The study also discovered that the activities of cooperative societies offer mutual benefits to their members such as financial assistance, soft loans, training, skills acquisition, job opportunity and self-reliance, etc. Majority of the respondents also opined that, the roles being played by cooperative societies are successful towards alleviating poverty.
However, despite its success rate, there exist some challenges facing cooperative societies towards alleviating poverty. Such major challenges include: poor or lack of soft credit loan, proper training, proper skill, sufficient seed fund, and poor participation of people in the activities of cooperative societies.
Cooperatives are therefore becoming the preferred mechanism or tools for mediating people access to major resources that they usually utilized to participate in other activities through which they earned a living. It is base on this that cooperative societies are contributing to poverty reduction and sustainable national development.
Recommendations
The following recommendations are made based on the findings of the study:
- The strategies of cooperative societies should be consciously articulated to realistically reflect proper skills and trainings of its members within specific needs of such communities in which they are based or situated.
- Social welfare programmes can be designed by Federal, State and Local Governments through the provision of subsidies to poor persons especially on food, education, housing, transport, etc thereby enhancing their descent living.
- People should be encouraged especially in poverty stricken areas to embark on self-help programmes through the activities of cooperative societies. This can be achieved through organisation of town hall meetings, workshops and seminars by cooperative societies to disseminate information on practical benefits of forming cooperative societies.
References
- Adebayo, S.T., & Pascal, H. (2010). Cooperative Association as a Tool For Rural Development and Poverty Reduction in Rwanda: A study of Abahuzamugambi ba Kawa in Maraba Sector Educational Research, 1(11), 600-608.
- Adedayo, A., & Yusuf, O.R. (2004). Cooperatives and unemployment reduction in Alleviation and food Production in Sub-Saharan Africa: Seminar paper on Risk Assessment of Global Agrifood Production Chains. Department of Economics and Management, University of Helsinki, Finland.
- Birchall, J. (2003). Rediscovering the Cooperative Advantage Poverty. Reduction through Self-help: Cooperative Branch, International Labour Office, Geneva.
- Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). (1999). Nigeria’s development prospects: Poverty assessment and alleviation study. Abuja; Central Bank of Nigeria in Collaboration with the World Bank.
- Ezekiel, P.O (2014). A study on co-operative societies, poverty reduction and sustainable development in Nigeria. IOSR Journal of Business and Management, Vol. 16, Issue 6. Ver. II (Jun. 2014), PP 132-140. Retrieved from www.iosrjournals.org
