EFFECT OF SECURITY CHALLENGES AND SUSTAINABILITY ON PERFORMANCE OF AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES IN ANAMBRA STATE NIGERIA

Abstract

This study empirically investigated the effect of security challenges and sustainability on performance of agricultural cooperatives in Anambra State Nigeria. The study is vital as it portrays the extent to which security challenges and sustainability ensure the performance of agricultural cooperatives. The study therefore adopted a survey research design. The choice of this design was to enable the researcher in gathering of data from total sample of a population to generalize the findings. The major instrument for data collection was structured questionnaire. The population of the study covers 21 cooperatives majoring on agriculture i.e (1 from each of the 21 local governments in Anambra State). Purposive sampling technique was used to select 20 respondents each from each of the 21 selected cooperatives totally 420 respondents. Descriptive statistics was used in analyzing the data while test of hypotheses for the study was done using panel least squares regression model operated with E-Views 12. The findings of the study revealed that security challenges have negative and significant effect on the performance of agricultural cooperatives in Anambra State. Also, sustainability was found to have positive and significant effect on the performance of agricultural cooperatives in Anambra State. Thus, the study concludes that the level of security challenges and sustainability practices determine the performance of agricultural cooperatives in Anambra State, Nigeria. In lieu of this, the study recommends the need for government involvement especially as regard to Fulani herders-farmers clashes on farmers’ cooperatives in Anambra State Nigeria so as to provide adequate security gadgets to the security personnel. Also, farmers’ cooperatives need to involve in sustainability practices as their performance depends on it.