Appraisal of Rural Women Empowerment through Skills Acquisition in Anambra and Rivers States of Nigeria

Abstract

The paper was a descriptive survey which tried to appraise the Nigerian rural women empowerment through Skills Acquisition Programme (SAP). Skill acquisition is the process of acquiring or gaining effective and ready knowledge in developing ones aptitude and ability in a particular field. Skill acquisition is one among other policies embarked upon in Nigeria with the sole aim to alleviate poverty. The study was conducted in Anambra and Rivers States of Nigeria. Three research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. The instrument for data collection was a 33 – item questionnaire developed by the researchers. The instrument was validated by experts in Curriculum and Measurement and Evaluation. The reliability coefficient of internal consistency of 0.82 was obtained using Cronbach Alpha technique. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions. While t-test statistics was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Results showed that most rural women have not received loans to start small scale business and that they would prefer government empowerment in areas like garri processing, soap making, farming and hair dressings. Although the Anambra rural women did not prefer to be empowered in snailry instead trading was preferred to them, while the reverse becomes the case with the Rivers State rural women. The differences in choice might be due to the riverine nature of Rivers State and the dryness of Anambra land. Based on the findings, recommendations were put forward among which were that; the fund released for any type of skills acquisition should be properly monitored to avoid embezzlement and misappropriation and that the acquisition of basic computer skills should be encouraged and emphasized.