HUMAN RESOURCES AND REGIONAL INTEGRATION

This paper being an empirical work assessed Human Resources and Regional Integration especially as it relates to Nigeria and other regional bodies like the Africa Union (AU), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Three research questions were designed for the study expecting responses from participants. The study used survey research design as this design type helps to gather, organize and analyze data obtained from a pool of respondents and generalise its outcome on the larger population. The population for this study comprises all human resource personnel in both private and public enterprises from Edo, Anambra and Lagos states respectively. The choice of these states is based on the premise that they are one of the economically strategically located states that have a functional HR structure in Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select a sample of 180 human resources personnel from both private and public establishments across the three identified states above. From each of the states, 60 respondents were captured from establishments like tertiary institutions, secondary schools, banks and companies respectively. The researcher adopted a researcher-structured instrument titled “Human Resources and Regional Integration Questionnaire (HRARIQ)” to collect data. The structured Questionnaire has 20 close-ended items on a 4-Point Likert Scale of Strongly Agee (SA), Agree (A), Disagree (D) and Strongly Disagree (SD) respectively. The Questionnaire was validated as construct validity was assured and sub-scale index r=0.835, 0.841 and 0.816 for the instrument was derived. With Cronbach Alpha, a reliability from an index value of 0.893 was obtained which shows internal consistency. Through mean and simple percentage, a descriptive statistics type, the sourced data was analysed. The study revealed that human resources management has an established influence on regional integration. It then concluded that the Presence of functional and operational labour laws would likely promote the integration of member states of which Nigeria is a key member.