RURAL WOMEN FARMERS ’ ASSESSMENT OF CREDIT ORIENTED SELF-HELP GROUPS IN DELTA STATE , NIGERIA

This study was conducted to analyze the perception of the rural woman about credit oriented self-help group in Delta State, Nigeria. A sample size of 110 respondents was used for the study and data were collected from them with the use of structured interview schedule and questionnaires. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and linear regression equation model as the lead equation. It was revealed that the women farmers subscribed to self-help groups in order to be able to have access to credit (mean = 3.78), information (mean = 3.55), extension services (mean = 3.45). The respondents were satisfied with their respective self-help groups. However, they had some challenges such as inadequate access to extension services (mean = 3.55) and lack of commitment by the leaders (mean = 3.22) and members (mean = 3.19). Educational level and frequency of extension contact of the respondents were found to influence their perception on self-help groups at 5% level of significance. It is recommended that governmental and non-governmental organizations, and university agricultural extension departments should carry out a campaign on workshops for these groups on commitment and extension agencies should diversify their focus to include selfhelp groups and activities.


Introduction
Self-help, according to American Psychological Association (APA), refers to self-guided improvement economically, intellectually, or emotionally, most frequently with a substantial psychotic or spiritual basis.Self-help often takes place based on self-reliance or support groups where people who find themselves in similar situation group together (VandenBos, 2007).Often people who find themselves in similar conditions come together to form self-help group such as co-operative societies and farmers' associations for the purpose of harnessing their financial resources as savings for the group and using such societies and associations to help themselves have access to credit facilities from the group.This is very common among rural women who according to Prakash (2003) are more involved in arable farming than men in the developing nations of the world.These women hardly own any land, and have difficulties in acquiring credit, particularly in sub-Sahara Africa and Caribbean countries, in spite of the fact that they produce up to 80% of basic food stuffs (Prakash, 2003).
Another problem rural women face is dearth of information by agricultural advisers and projects since extension agents do not often pay attention to them.Since most agricultural extension agents are men, it is difficult for them to interact with female farmers frequently.Ofuoku (2011) found that husbands of the female farmers react negatively to frequent contact between their wives and male extension agents.Okorodudu and Okobiah (2004) observe that in Nigeria incidence of spouse abuse involving wife beating by the husband has been reported.
The self-help groups like the farmers' association and co-operative societies are supposed to be panacea to the problems encountered by these women.But the attitude of these women towards their self-help groups determines the success or goal attainment through them.
Through self-help groups, the women are expected to be able to harness their resource and have easy access to credit and extension services since the ratio of extension agents to farmers is disproportionate.According to Ofuoku (2011), there is a negative disposition of their spouse to frequent male extension contact when singly visited by male extension agents, who are more numerous than female extension agents among field extension agents in Delta State.
Food security means having sufficient food all year round, but more than three million people in Africa currently face food insecurity and the challenges to meet their food and nutrition need are likely to become greater in the years ahead (Meludu et al., 1999).According to Prakash (2003), women grow about half of the world's food, but hardly own any land, have difficulty in attaining credit and are overlooked by agricultural advisors and projects.In Africa and Nigeria in particular, three quarters of the agricultural work are done by women especially in the area of food crop production.
Considering the aforementioned and in spite of the existence of self-help groups, rural women still suffer in terms of access to credit and extension services.Self-help groups such as co-operative societies, farmers' associations and traders' association are formed to empower individuals to carry out their productive activities and for self development.Therefore, it is imperative to understand the dynamics of the psychological process involved in the interaction of rural women and self-help groups in the process of empowering themselves.This would likely result into a solid policy foundation block for the Ministry of Commerce and Industry which regulates cooperative society activities for effective and efficient self-help system in the study area in particular and similar ministries in other states of Nigeria.
The major objective of the study was to analyze the perception on satisfaction of rural women towards credit oriented self-help groups in Delta State.Specifically, the objectives were to determine: (i) the socio-economic characteristics of rural women engaged in self-help groups in Delta State; (ii) the types of self-help groups in the study area; (iii) the level of satisfaction of rural women toward self-help groups in Delta State; (iv) the constraints encountered by rural women in self-help groups in the study area.
The hypothesis was that the socio-economic characteristics of the rural women do not influence their perception of credit oriented self-help groups in the study area with respect to need satisfaction.

Material and Methods
The study area is Delta State, Nigeria.The state is located roughly between longitude 5°00' and 6°45' East of Greenwich Meridian and latitude 5°00' and 6°30' North of the Equator.The state shares boundary with Edo State to the north, Bayelsa State and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, Anambra State to the east and Ondo State to the west.
The state lies in the forest vegetation belt.Tree and arable crops are predominantly grown by farmers who form about 75% of the population and are mostly small scale farmers, the majority of whom are women.
The state is divided into three agricultural zones -Delta North, Central and South Agricultural Zones by the Delta State Agricultural Development Program with Agbor, Effurun and Warri as the Zonal headquarters respectively.Delta South and Central Agriculture Zones have 8 extension blocks each, while Delta North Agricultural Zone comprises 9 extension blocks.
Four agricultural extension blocks were randomly selected from each of the three agricultural zones.From each of the blocks selected, 12 women farmers were randomly selected using lottery method from the register of the self-help groups.This will give us 144 respondents at the end, but only 110 structured interview schedule and questionnaire copies could be retrieved.
Data for the study were generated from primary sources.The primary data were generated from the selected respondents, using questionnaires for those with high level education and structured interview schedules for those who have low level of education and those who are not formally educated.The instrument was administered by the researcher and trained enumerator that were hired from among the extension agents.The level of satisfaction of the farmers was measured using Likert's scale.
The data collected for study were analyzed by using descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentages and means derived from 5-point Likert's scale.The hypotheses were analysed with the use of linear regression.
The 5-point Likert's scale was calibrated as follows: strongly agree (SA) = 5; agree (A) = 4; undecided (UD) = 3; disagree (DA) = 2; and strongly disagree (SD) = 1.The multiple regression model was implicitly specified as follows: where: Y = level of satisfaction, X 1 = levels of education (years), X 2 = age of women (years), X 3 = extension visits (number of visits by extension agents in a month), X 4 = household size (number of persons in the household).
Four functional forms of the model -linear double log, semi log and exponential were fitted to determine the function with the best fit and the linear model proved to be the best fit.

Socio-economic characteristics of respondents
Table 1 indicates that most (29.10%) of the rural women were above 60 years of age.Those aged 41-50 years reached 24.55%, while those aged 51-60 years reached 20% of the respondents.The implication is that since the younger ones were not as many as those aged 41 to above 60 years, they (younger ones) have either relocated to urban areas in search of white collar jobs or are in various tertiary institutions.Tadaro (1976) as cited by Ekong (2003) hypothesized that the greater the difference in economic opportunities between urban regions the greater is the flow of migrants from rural areas.
Most women (38.18%) were married while 26.36% were widowed; 18.18% were single and 15.45% were divorced.Most of them were saddled with responsibilities, particularly the married, divorced and windowed.
Most (31.81%) of the rural women had tertiary education.Those that had secondary education accounted for 30.91% and those with primary education 27.27%.Very few (10%) had no formal education.
This means that most of the rural women had one form of formal education or the other.Most (19.09%) had 6-person household.This was followed by those (15.45%)who had 5-person household.This is at variance with campaign on birth control and the biting economic situation; many household heads have resolved to control birth.Most (29.10%) of the women had farms of the size of ½ ha.This was followed by those (12.72%)who had farms of the size of 3½ ha and those (10.91%)who had farms of the size of 6 ha and above.This implies that most of the women are smallholder farmers.Most (21.81%) of the farmers had an annual income of between N50,000 and 100,000; 16.36% had an annual income of between N 101,000 and N150,000; 11.82% had an annual income of between N151,000 and N200,000; 3.63% had an annual income of N451,000 and N500,000 and 4.54% had an annual income of above N500,000.This implies that most of the women have very poor income.This can be attributed to their levels of farm operation.
Most (61.81%) of them opined that they had no contact with extension agents while 20% had one contact with them monthly; 4.45% twice monthly; 6.36% three times in a month and 6.63% four times monthly.This means that most of the women have no access to extension agents.This agrees with Fadiji et al. (2006), who discovered that access to extension agents is related to the socio-economic status of farmers.This is so because the above information indicates that most of the women received low level of income and had small-sized farms.This is also attributed to sociological reasons among which is that in Africa, the society frowns at frequent interaction between men and married women, and as a result of this, male extension agents, who make the majorityof extension agents in Delta State, find it difficult to interact with the women farmers (Ofuoku, 2011).
Most (53.63%) of the respondents subscribed to various farmers' cooperative societies, while 18.18% registered their membership with Fish farmers' association; 15.45% of the respondents subscribed to Cassava Farmers Association and 12.72% registered with All Farmers' Association of Nigeria.These various self-help groups have been formed by the women and other farmers for their benefit with respect to their farming business which translates to higher level of living among the members and the women in particular.
Reasons for subscribing to self-help groups Table 2 indicates that all the reasons for subscription to the various self-help groups were very important to the respondents and they include access to: information (mean = 3.55), inputs (mean = 3.45) credit (mean = 3.78) and extension services (mean = 3.25).The most important reasons include access to credit information.The results are congruent with the findings of Ofuoku et al. (2008) as they discovered the same set of reasons being behind subscription to cooperative societies and other self-help groups among fish farmers in southern Nigeria.88) 10 (30) ( 28) 27 ( 27 Credit and information are very crucial to successful business transaction and farming in particular.Ike and Ajieh (2009) opined that part of the philosophy of a cooperative organization like women's self-help groups is fulfilment of the credit and information needs of their members.

Level of satisfaction with self-help groups' operations among respondents
Table 3 indicates that the respondents were very satisfied with their various self-help groups.This is evident as Cassava farmers' association's operation was rated as very satisfactory (mean = 4.47), All Farmers' Association of Nigeria members rated its operations as being very satisfactory (mean = 3.92); farmers' cooperative society was rated as very satisfactory (mean = 4.45) and Fish farmers' association was also rated as very satisfactory (mean = 4.40).This is congruent with part of the philosophy of cooperative organizations which is fulfilling of the needs of their members, who are conscious of the benefits of collective action as stated by Ike and Ajieh (2009).Ofuoku and Urang (2012) found that farmers were satisfied with the rate of release of credit to them by their various cooperative groups.However, Ugbomeh et al. (2008) found that members of women self-help groups in Bayelsa State, Nigeria were not satisfied with their groups.Ike (2009) discovered that there was a disparity between the amounts of credit applied for by members of self-help groups in Enugu State, Nigeria.The members of the various groups have decided to join the groups in a desire to derive mutual benefits and achieve economic independence.The greater the extent to which a group fulfills the needs of members, the more cohesive the group will be (Ogionwo and Eke, 1999).Ofuoku et al. (2008) also discovered that there is a relationship between satisfaction of the needs of the members and cohesiveness of the fish farmers' groups in southern Nigeria.

Constraints to self-help groups
Table 4 shows that inadequate access to extension services (mean = 3.55); lack of commitment by leaders (mean = 3.22) and lack of commitment by members (mean = 3.19) were the major constraints to the operations of self-help groups in the study area.Inadequate access to extension service was also discovered by Ofuoku and Ajieh (2005) to be a serious constraint among poultry farmers in Delta State.This was attributed to the inadequate population of extension agents in the study area.Lack of commitment by leaders is evidenced by irregular attendance at meetings, irregular payment of subscription and autocratic leadership style by leaders.According to Ogionwo and Eke (1999), there is a relationship between groups' leader and cohesiveness of the group.This implies that uncommitted leadership can upset the cohesiveness of a group as people do not like autocratic leadership style in a group that is supposed to be democratic one.
The leadership style used by the group leaders matters a lot (Shea, 1999).Members also require that leaders should lead by example by paying their subscriptions regularly.Membership's lack of commitment is attributed to irregular attendance to meetings and irregular payment of subscription and irregular refund of loans.This is congruent with the findings of Ofuoku and Agbamu (2013), who found that leadership of many self-help groups in Delta State was not effective.Attributes like this can also upset cohesiveness of group.These issues should be typified by such norms as honesty, fairness, equity, democracy and mutual fellow feelings (Ofuoku et al, 2006).

Test of hypothesis
In Table 5 only the lead equation which is the linear functional form is presented for the women.The choice of the linear equation was based on the magnitude of the coefficient of determination (R 2 ), the number of significant variables and the conformity of the sign the variables bear to a priori expectation.The table indicates an R 2 value of 0.611.This implies that 61.1% of the variations in the perception of the women were explained by the independent variable included in the model.The F-ratio is also statistically significant which attests to the fact that the models fit the data.Respondent's educational level and frequency of extension contact were statistically significant and positively related to the level of satisfaction with self-help groups.
Table 5.Estimated relationship between socio-economic characteristics of the rural women and their perception of credit oriented self-help groups in the study area with respect to need satisfaction.These imply that increase in variables ceteris paribus would result to increase in appreciation of the self-help groups by the women.These variables (education and frequency of extension contact) can therefore be said to influence the women's perception of self-help groups.The results on level of education and frequency of extension contact are not surprising as it was expected that farmers with higher level of formal education and higher frequency of extension contact would have higher perception about self-help groups than those with lower level of formal education and lower frequency of extension contact.This is in consonance with the results obtained by Adekoya and Ajayi (2000) and Ajayi and Banmeke (2007).Education and frequency of extension contact are therefore, two salient variables that influence satisfaction as perceived by the respondents.

Conclusion
The rural women belong to various self-help groups.They subscribed to these self-help groups in order to have access to information on their farming activities, inputs, and credit and extension services.They were very satisfied with their various self-help groups, but still have some challenges ranging from inadequate access to extension services and inputs to lack of commitment by the leaders and members.Conclusively, they were satisfied with the benefit they gained from selfhelp groups, especially with respect to access to credit and information.
Considering the findings, it is recommended that: i) Extension agents should expand their focus to include self-help groups' activities.This will take into account the challenges of inadequate extension services and inadequate access to inputs.
ii) Governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations and members in self-help groups should interact closely in order to appreciate the problems involved in the group process.
iii) The leaders that are obstinate should be voted out of office and committed members should be elected by members of the respective groups to replace them.

Table 1 .
Socio-economic characteristics of respondents.

Table 2 .
Reasons for subscribing to self-help groups among respondents.

Table 3 .
Level of satisfaction with self-help groups operating among respondents.

Table 4 .
Constraints to self-help groups.