1.1 Introduction
Cooperative societies constitute the most important aspects of agriculture rural development. It was proposed as a result of the evils of the industrial revolution as of 1750 – 1850. The purpose of agricultural cooperatives is to help farmers increase their yields and incomes by pooling their resources to support collective service provisions and economic empowerment. Given their primary remit to contribute to smallholder farmer production, agricultural cooperatives are seen as critical in achieving the government’s development targets in the Growth and Transformation Plan, and focusing on other types of cooperatives requires an alternative framework for analysis.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
Co-operative agriculture is the growth of crops and rearing of animals for human consumption. Crops include cash and food crops, seed, seedlings; it also includes those that engage in livestock, horticulture and orderly. According IJERE (2005) co-operative is a very wide one, it has two main branches that is owned and borrowed what belongs to you and what you set from another source. Owned capital is constituted with by share and reverses mainly.
According to IJERE (1970) rural and co-operative development has strategies and plans to help improve the living standards of the rural population. Development and economic growth are essential to determine the standard of living both the rural and urban dwellers. This will also create awareness and increase in the economic standard of the rural population and it eliminates such plagues as ignorance, poverty, poor standard of living and general backwardness associated with the underdevelopment.
This issue of infrastructural development which is pertinent to co-operative development will include our rural dwellers as long as the rural areas are not developed and one imagines what life would be like without electricity, pipe born water, good roads, net work facilities viewing centers and others.
Co-operative movement the greatest impediment to a dynamic co-operative movement in Nigeria once we get it right, every other thing falls in place. Finance they say is the act of raising funds and using of funds by individuals, co-operative firms and government organization for the day to day operation, running and management of business undertaking.
Finance is the life line organization be it profit oriented or welfare/ religious organization. Finance concerns itself with sourcing acquisition and utilization of fund in organization need to raise funds for it to effectively and efficiently deliver its goal. Even though co-operative de-emphasizes the role of capital, it is now ever needed seriously for the society to grow.
Therefore, in Imo State where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Equipping Co-operative a Financially through Federal Government Assistance.
1.3 Statement of Problems
Investigation reveals the problems of the research work, which entails that;
- Raising of funds among the co-operative in Nigeria has some impediment,
- Lack of collateral as demanded by the lauding institutes.
Cooperatives society is of the major organization were people mostly in rural areas emerged together to achieve their set objectives the problem is to access how important cooperative societies it to the rural development.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study
The aim of the study is to scrutinize the Equipping Co-operative a Financially through Federal Government Assistance using Bank of Agriculture, Imo State Branch as a case study. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:
- To examine problems militating against cooperative activities in Bank of Agriculture, Imo State Branch
- To provide insight into the process through which the community and cooperative leaders can ensure genuine development of agriculture in Bank of Agriculture, Imo State Branch
- To assess the contribution of Federal Government Assistance towards equipping Co-operative financially.
1.5 Research Questions
The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:
- Does the Bank of Agriculture contribute in financing co-operative projects in Imo State?
- Is there any projects facing co-operative financing?
- Does the Bank of Agriculture financing co-operative through loans or on tending?
- How much loans has given to co-operative over the period of 2015-2020?
1.6 Research Hypothesis
In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.
- H0: There is no significant factor affecting BOA (Bank of Agriculture) contribution towards financing co-operative projects in Imo State
- H1: There is a significant factor affecting BOA (Bank of Agriculture) contribution towards financing co-operative projects in Imo State
1.7 Significance of Study
The government plays a fundamental role in financing of co-operative societies, given the fact that co-operative are characterized people who do not have or are into financially buoyant enough to carry out their activities. Government give co-operative financed leverage in the form of grants, over drafts, soft loans and trade credits. The role of government to co-operative societies goes along way helping and facilitating their operating of co-operative toward the achievement of the society goals and attiring greater heights in economic development as a whole.
This study will be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.
1.8 Scope of Study
The study focuses on the Equipping Co-operative a Financially through Federal Government Assistance using Bank of Agriculture, Imo State Branch as a case study. The research work is to cover only Imo state zonal branch operative area of Nigeria agricultural co-operative. Rural development bank (BOA) it will not study in detail the activities development time constraints was one of my greatest problems there were constraints and limitation posed by the government bureaucratic.
1.9 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this establishment to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).
1.10 Definition of Terms
Cooperative: It means the relationship between individual people or cooperative organizations united together to help themselves through mutual action.
Rural Urban Migration: This also means urban rush the movement of people from rural areas to urban areas may be due to the problem of electricity or lack of job and good roads.
