Adherence to cooperative principles among agricultural cooperatives in Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study assessed agricultural cooperatives’ level of adherence to cooperative guiding principles in Oyo State, Nigeria. Multi stage sampling procedure was used to select 126 respondents for the study. Data on group characteristics, level of awareness, adherence and constraints to adherence to cooperative principles were collected using structured questionnaire and analysed using chi square at 5% level of significance. The mean year of existence of the cooperatives was 10years while the mean membership size was 44. In addition, many of the cooperatives (44.4%) were fairly strong financially. More than half (53.2%) of the respondents had high level of awareness of the cooperative principles while 57.1% had high level of adherence to the principles. Meanwhile, inadequate financing and loan recovery difficulty ( ?̅=1.4 each) were the main constraints to adherence to the principles. There was a significant relationship between respondents’ level of awareness and adherence to the cooperative principles (?²= 0.013, p ≤ 0.05). Agricultural cooperatives in the area largely adhered to the cooperatives principles. However, capacity building on innovative financial sourcing and loan recovery mechanisms should be embarked upon by management to enhance the adherence.

Keywords: Cooperatives principles, loan recovery, agricultural cooperatives, group adherence