Assessment of women participation in home gardening in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nigeria

Abstract

The study assessed women participation in home gardening in Abuja-FCT. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 114 respondents from three Area Councils in the FCT. Validated interview schedule with reliability coefficient of 0.71 was used for data collection and data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage and mean and regression model. The results revealed that about 40.0% of the respondents were within the age range of 41-50 years, while 46.4% of the respondents had tertiary education. Findings of the study also indicated that majority of the respondents cultivated pumpkin (98.2%), bitter leaf (98.2%), green vegetables (94.7%) and maize (91.2%). The result further showed that home garden provides fresh vegetables/spices (81.5%), food/fruits (80.7%) as well as nutritional (77.1%) and medicinal (71.9%) benefits for the household of the respondents, which enhance their food security. Results further indicated that age (p<0.01), educational level (p<0.01), access to adequate space (p<0.01) and housewifery (p<0.10) had significant and positive influence on women participation in home garden farming. Some of the severe constraints faced by the respondents were lack of extension services and pests infestation. The study concludes that women highly participated in almost all home garden activities. Thus, it was recommended that the scope of extension services in FCT should be expanded to adequately cover cities and urban centre’s home garden farming families.