COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR POVERTY ALLEVIATION AND ECONOMICS DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR POVERTY ALLEVIATION AND ECONOMICS DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1    GENERAL OVERVIEW

Co-operation provides vehicle for broadening and enriching live, infect co-operatives are playing leading roles in some of the largest and most important social and economic development of our times (source). Co-operatives are vital element in many places in the world today and that they are flexible instruments that can be adopted to serve their members in the future. Co-operative all over the world are man aged democratically both in principle and structure. The present in Nigeria is creating a new environment and offer new opportunities that are favorable to the development of co-operatives in Nigerian.

These new condition offer themselves both co-operative and international companies. Furthermore to justify its prime role is social, economic and political development particularly in developed counties like England known for consumer co-operative France known for credit co-operatives the movement is a world wide phenomenon. It has developed from single traditional forms of mutual institution. The institution has gamed world wide acceptance because of the great rote. It has been playing in the developing counties. The economic success of co-operatives inevitable yield which in turn yield better income and which in a sense means better living standards for members and their fertilizes.

The creeping poverty facing Nigeria has been well documented the World Bank and United Nations. Perhaps a better picture can be given by looking at the condition of the children who suffer permanent damages because of poor education in adequate diet and dilapidated housing. The health problems of the children of the rural drivellers are. Particularly serve as indicated by the medical doctors who examined children in the country during the last house to house immunization. The parents of those children are unemployed, some of them are underemployed. Underemployment refers to a situation where workers who are qualified for a job have no job perform. While underemployment occurs when productive resources are not utilized to their full capacity for example, a person who is sweeping floor is underemployment. It is possible to have full employment yet there is under employment, suppose you receive your degree in economics but the job you could find was pumping gas. In this situation you are employed, but underemployed.

Also one of the economic problems that has continued to eat deep into the system and to poverty is inflation. This is the persistent up ward movement in the general price level or average price level for goods and services. This is decrease in the general level of purchasing power of the Naira. As the price level goes up, the purchasing power of the naira doctrines as well as when the price level goes down the purchasing power of the naira rise. The litter money in the hands of rural poor masses cannot buy any thing as a result of the inflation in the state presently practicing is a discipline of hunger and poverty.

There are other erits which includes mean’s exploration of man, falsification of weight and measures child labor unfair competition etc. it is all these short comings (evils) of the individual capitalism which the \o-operative system want to subdue and suppress in its entirety. Development and its importance especially rural development cannot be overemphasized in Nigeria. In a state where more than to percent of the populations are rural drivellers, it becomes more crucial while emphasis should be placed on the rural pleasant, with out them, the key to substantial and grass root development cannot be realized in the state. Therefore rural development whether embarked upon by the national Government through the development of co-operative societies must take into account the real need and the aspiration of the rural people, it must also involve ways of making them part and parcel of the development programmes through proper mobilization and empowerment.

Finally, poverty alleviation and programmes (PAP) currently being approved by obansend government. Poverty eradication or alleviation can only work through the rural dwellers imitating change by organizing societies like cop-operatives which they can control. These cop-operatives have had varying degrees of success elsewhere lie England, will consumer co-operatives and finance, with industrial cop-operatives movement, just to mention bat a few.

1.2   STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The socio-political environment existing now in the country since man 1999 when the present governments of CHIEF IKEDI OHAKIM   administration look over is quite different from what it was in those early days of military regime and pure capitalism. Today it is the mixed economy every where with both private and public properties in existence. Nobody will went the society to return to the old dictatorship and subsistence living. Everybody enjoys high technology, division of labor, mass production of a wide assortment of good the right and freedom of the masses are respected the interference from government in other business organization like the co-operatives are less. These and more are the characteristics if the modern economy. Co-operative which provides the technology for the masses and their participation in those functions of the ceremony that implied on their lives.