Introduction
1.1 Background of the study
The development of rural areas until very recently was not given much attention and prominence in Nigeria. Much of her policies were concerned with changing the urban landscape and the fortunes of urban dwellers. The realization on the part of policy makers and development experts that national development cannot be true development until the vast rural areas of the country are developed and brought into the mainstream of development, then and only then can we talk of true development Right from the colonial period the rural sector constitutes the socially and economically backward areas of Nigeria.
Besides, the gap between the rural areas and urban areas has continued to widen in an alarming proportion. Invariably, the peasant population who formed the bulk of rural areas and produce much of the agricultural products that the nation depend on seemed neglected by government, a situation that has resulted in the much orchestrated problems of rural-urban drift, declining agricultural production and its attendant food shortage, unemployment, urban congestion and over stretched facilities (Ottong, Ering, and Akpan, 2010 and Saheed and Okide, 2012). However, in Nigeria and in most Third World societies, there had been an increasing upsurge in the concern for problems of underdevelopment especially as they affect rural areas. The concern is the need to optimize yields from natural as well as human resources by exerting control of influence upon all parts of such resources in order to realize maximum benefit from the development efforts, Ebong (1991).
…
