Introduction
Bus 213 is a code given to a course titled Co-operative Development. The course is being offered the whole students in the school of business studies, but housed in the Department of Co-operative Economics and Management (CEM). It was offered during the first semester of my NDII. The course was provided with the aim to enrich the students involved, with the knowledge of the growth and development of modern co-operative in the world. The course was in mimeography written by Mr. C.C Bob Igwe, MBA NINIM, a lecturer in the co-operative Economics Department in Institute of Management and Technology, (IMT) Enugu.
As the Bus 213 is Co-operative Development indeed, then what is the meaning of this key words, “Co-operative and Development?”
Co-operative mean people working together to achieve a common objective (STAN .O. UCHENDU (1998:2). It is therefore a general term which covers a wide range of activities in which two or more people work together either formally or informally, temporarily or ad hoc or on a permanent basis to achieve a given legal or illegal, socially accepted or unaccepted goal(s).
The concept of co-operation as economic and social organ started first among people whose means of livelihood were frustrated by the introduction of machine and factory system. They were forced by poverty to submit to long hours of work, harsh discipline and squalor of industrial settlement (Industrial Revolution Period). The basic idea of co-operation is that there is a group action to achieve common goal.
Development on the other hand could be referred to as the act or means of gradual advancement or progression of co-operation from crude or cradle or from a particular speculation to other part of the world. From one stage of maturity to another.
Development of co-operation was not a child of circumstance but a child of necessity as it came on the stage when it was mostly needed to salvage the poor masses from the cruelty of the middlemen and exploitative employers.
1.1 Definition:
Co-operation can be seen as a union of people with common goal. The people did not unite for thin common goal to fall from heaven. There is business enterprises inclusive in co-operation through which their needs should be reached and satisfied.
According to INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATIVE ALLIANCE (I C A OF 1895), “Co-operative society is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and Democratically controlled enterprises.”
The ICA in addition went further to give out the most important characteristics:
- A co-operative as an autonomous body means free from government control.
- Joint voluntarily: They should not be forced to join instead it is through creating awareness.
- A co-operative is an association of persons not capital. The interest of the members must come before those of capital.
- The objective of the group is to meet the members needs in the economic field as well as their aspiration in the social and cultural field, religions and political, criminal objective are however excluded.
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