RURAL YOUTH PARTICIPATION IN INFRASTRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN ISIN LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF KWARA STATE , NIGERIA

The study investigated the level of youth participation in infrastructural development in Isin local government area of Kwara State, Nigeria. One hundred and five youths were randomly selected from seven rural communities, fifteen youths from each village. Data were collected with the aid of a questionnaire, which was analysed using frequency count and percentages. Chisquare analysis was used to test the hypothesis of significance between the socioeconomic characteristics and the level of participation in infrastructural development. Findings revealed that 56.2% of respondents were within the age category of 21–30 years, 62.9% were male, and 60% were single, while 56.2% of the respondents had secondary school level education. The study revealed the various roles played by youths in participating in infrastructural development as well as the associated constraints which include finance, availability of materials, technical knowledge and time. Age, marital status, educational level and years of residence were found to be significantly related to the level of participation of youths in infrastructural development. The study recommended the adequate budget allocation to rural areas as well as intensive training and educative programmes for effective participative development.


Introduction
Concentrated efforts on the development of Nigerian rural communities have led to the implementation of several infrastructural development programmes in the country with the aim of improving the standard of living of the rural dwellers and also suppressing rural-urban migration.Participation is a concept of getting individuals in the community to be actively involved in those things that are liked, believed and understood by most people, hence popular participation is the method of allowing every member of the community to play an active role in the affairs that affect their lives in the community.This involves a process of mobilizing people to manage resources and make decisions that affect their lives.In the context of development, community participation refers to an active process whereby beneficiaries influence the direction and execution of development projects rather than merely receive a share of project profits.Poor performance of government in meeting the socio-economic quest of citizens in the developing countries was identified as one of the reasons behind the proliferation of community based organizations in the new millennium (Abegunde, 2009).
In Nigeria, like in other developing countries of the world, youth associations and clubs are equally formed by youth in rural communities.Youth associations helped in preserving and improving traditions and cultural values of the communities; promoting unity and ensuring peace among the people in the community in which they live.They represent their communities and defend their interest in political and developmental issues (Akinola, 2007).Youth as term is referred to as the period between childhood and adulthood.The United Nations defines youth as all individuals aged between 15 and 24.The 2007 World Development Report, which focuses on 'the next generation', expands the definition of youth to include all young people aged between 12 and 24.The life of a youth is characterized by unique and special attributes.Participation helps youths in planning and acting together for the satisfaction of their felt needs through organized efforts to acquire skills and the concepts required for their effective participation in the problem solving process (Akinbile et al., 2006).
Youth participation as a development strategy in community development requires sustained engagement of youth.This is because youth constitute the major resource base for any country that wants to embark on any meaningful rural development project.Active participation helps youths in planning and acting together for the satisfaction of their felt needs through organized efforts and it ultimately leads to mutual group and self-development.Nigerian youths need proper harnessing so that they can maintain the status quo in their locality.In fact, youth participation in real and concrete activities which include environmental sanitation and renovation work has been reported (Adesope et al., 2007).As youths are brought into community organizations they have traditionally been excluded from, they can participate in local decision-making at multiple levels.This collaboration leads to skill enhancement, confidence building, and feeling of ownership that prepare them as they navigate toward adulthood (Brennan et al., 2007).
Rural youths are involved in community development because they want to help their communities, to be recognized, to interact with peers, and to gain personal benefits (Adesope et al., 2003).This is because at various levels government seemed to neglect the vital roles that these aspects had in rural farming communities.Adesiji et al. (2009) found that the absence of social amenities was among the reasons for youth rural-urban drift.Hence, the presence of important infrastructural facilities in rural communities helps to reduce the rate of rural-urban migration and thus, to reduce the ever depleting farming population in the country.Then it becomes necessary to exploit their active features for progressive change in the community.Since this is important, there is the need to encourage active youth participation at all developmental levels.
The general objective of this study is to investigate the level of rural youth participation in infrastructural development in Isin local government area in Kwara State, Nigeria.The specific objectives are to: i. identify the personal characteristics of the youth in the study area; ii. investigate those infrastructural developments in the study area; iii. identify donors of the infrastructural facilities; iv.assess the factors that motivate them to participate in the infrastructural development; v. identify the sources of technical expertise; vi.determine the constraints the youth face in participating in infrastructural development.
The hypothesis was that there is no significant relationship between rural youth personal characteristics and the level of participation in infrastructural development.

Material and Methods
The study was carried out in Isin local government area of Kwara State, Nigeria.The population for the study comprised all youths (people aged 40 and younger) in the study area.Two-stage sampling technique was used for the study.Out of the thirteen (13) major towns, seven were randomly selected, including Ijara Isin, Owu Isin, Isanlu Isin, Oke Onigbin, Oke Aba, Opanda and Olla communities.Seven rural towns were randomly selected from the list obtained from Kwara State Agricultural Development Project.From the list, fifteen (15) youths were randomly selected from each town selected, with a total number of 105 respondents.Data were obtained with the aid of a well-structured questionnaire.
Descriptive statistics including the use of frequency and percentage were used.Three point Likert type scale was used to determine the participation level of the respondents in infrastructural development, stated as: always participated (AP) = 3, sometimes participated (SP) = 2, never participated (NP) = 1.
The inferential statistical tool employed was chi-square in testing the level of significance between the socio-economic characteristics of respondents and their level of participation in infrastructural development.

Results and Discussion
Socio-economic characteristics of respondents are presented in Table 1.Data reveal that more than half (56.2%) of respondents are aged between 15 and 25 years and this implies their true identity of being youths and their level of contributions in community development since youths have been noted for their active involvement in community development, greater social propensity, faster reaction time, innovation proneness (Jibowo and Sotomi, 1996;Adesope et al., 2007).Table 1 also shows that respondents were predominantly male (63%) and also a majority were single (60%).This further affirmed the fact that youth in the study area would fully participate in developmental programmes without hindrance that may occur as a result of marriage.Most of the respondents (56.2%) attended secondary school, 12.4% had no formal education, 8.6% had primary school education, 11.2% had vocational education, while 11.4% pursued tertiary education.This indicates a fairly high literacy level of the respondents with its possible influence on attitude and participation in infrastructural development.Adesope et al. (2010) found that education showed a significant association with respondents' attitude towards rural development and emphasized that as one receives education, s/he has a wider horizon of knowledge and appreciates the dynamism of changes in the environment better.The majority (71.5%) of respondents have lived in the area for a long time.Hence, this possibly has influenced the way the residents perceive themselves as part of the community and the way they consider development project as their own.This finding is in agreement with that of Omokore et al. (2008), who found that literacy training and vocational training were rural youth training needs for effective rural transformation.Other factors indicated as serious factors include: need to boost income generation (55.5%) and need to gain expertise (42.9%).This finding is related with Adesope et al. (2003), who observed that youths are involved in community development because they want to help their communities, to be recognized, to interact with peers, and to gain personal benefits.A high level of youth participation in various stages of infrastructural development was revealed (Table 4).Most youth participate highly in gathering and supplying of materials in all the stages of infrastructural development: 64% (building of schools), 58% (health centre construction), 67% (building of town hall), 71% (local road construction), 73% (building of post office) and 69% (market construction).Similarly, a relatively high level of participation was observed in the area of labour supply across all the stages as given in Table 4: 48% (building of schools), 43% (health centre construction), 55% (building of town hall), 64% (local road construction) 65% (building of post office), and 44% (market construction).This provides evidence on the unique attributes of youthful stage in the aspects of energy, work spirit and innovative proneness.This finding is similar to Matanmi et al. (2006Matanmi et al. ( /2007)), who found that community development associations gave road construction the greatest attention in Offa local government area of Kwara State.The results in Table 4 revealed the manifestation of meaningful contribution of rural youth to the infrastructural development process.
Sources of technical expertise in infrastructural development are presented in Table 5.The community leaders provided the majority of the technical expertise as it accounted for the highest percentage in construction of health centres (44%), building of town hall (65%), road construction (44%), building of post office (58%), and market construction (61%), as this shows the level of local leader activeness, roles and participation in rural development.Table 4 also presents change agents as the main source of technical expertise in construction of schools as it accounted for 46.7%.The constraints faced in participating in infrastructural development are shown in Table 6.The constraints mainly (53.3%) faced by the respondents are financial constraints, while about 48% of the respondents were limited by availability of materials.The majority (66%) of respondents indicated that time as a factor does not influence their participation in infrastructural development.This statement is in line with Akinsorotan and Oludije (2006), who stated that events have shown that there are many factors militating against activities of youth associations which discourage youth involvement in community development projects.The hypothesis in this study was that there is no significant relationship between their personal characteristics and the level of participation in infrastructural development, and it was tested using chi-square analysis.As revealed in Table 7, among the personal characteristics, the variables tested against the level of participation in infrastructural development, age ( 2 = 16.05%,P = 0.003), marital status ( 2 = 30.325,P=0.000), religion ( 2 = 13.143,P = 0.0011), educational level ( 2 = 15.345,P=0.012), and years of residence ( 2 = 20.824,P = 0.008) were found to be significantly related to the level of youth participation in infrastructural development.Table 7 indicates that gender had no significant relationship with the level of youth participation in infrastructural development.This implies that gender as a variable did not prevent the respondents from participating in infrastructural development.There is, therefore, a significant relationship between the personal characteristics of the respondents and their level of participation.

Conclusion
The study examined the level of youth participation in infrastructural development in Isin local government area of Kwara State.The study concluded that the youths in the study had a high level of participation in infrastructural development.To encourage rural youth participation in infrastructural development, the recommendations from the study are as follows: 1. Public enlightenment programmes should be organized from time to time to educate youth on the significance of youth participation in infrastructural development programmes in the society.
2. Intensive training in adaptive skills as well motivation programmes should be provided to improve the attitude of youths toward community development.
3. Project initiation should involve youths at all stages of developmental programmes.

Table 1 .
Socio-economic characteristics of respondents.

Table 3 .
Factors motivating youth performance in the infrastructural development.

Table 4 .
Level of participation in various stages of infrastructural development.

Table 5 .
Sources of technical expertise in infrastructural development.

Table 6 .
Constraints faced in participating in infrastructural development.

Table 7 .
Chi-square analysis of personal characteristics of the youths and the level of participation in infrastructural development.