ASSESSMENT OF RURAL HOUSEHOLDS’ PARTICIPATION IN EMPOWERMENT PROGRAMMES OF NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOs) IN NIGER STATE, NIGERIA.

Abstract

NGOs have become tremendously active in a wide range of discipline and other more specialized roles such as poverty alleviation, emergency response, human rights work; hence the need to know rural households’ participation in these programmes. Therefore, this study assessed rural households’ participation on empowerment programmes of nongovernmental organizations in Niger state Nigeria. Data was obtained from randomly selected 112 households using structured questionnaires and analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics. The result revealed that majority of the respondents (66.1%) were females, single (63.4%), had no formal education (66.1%) and are mostly farmers (63.4%). to The result on the extent of household participation in empowerment programmes showed that skill acquisitions and vocational training (X ̅=3.85) ranked first while Community sanitation services (X ̅=2.18) ranked the least. Probit regression model was used to analyzed the factors affecting the participation in empowerment programmes of NGOS, the result revealed that marital institution (0.66), formal education (0.71), distance to nearest market (-0.47), household size -0.20), age (0.44) and complexity of the programme (-0.87) are significant determinants. The constraints of households’ participation in empowerment programmes of NGOs were inaccessibility to the programmes, lack of awareness and language barriers. Thus, it was recommended that Non-Governmental Organizations should broaden their links so as to expose the rural people to a variety of empowerment/ training programmes.