Roles of Cooperatives in Rural Development in Ikwerre and Emohua Local Government Areas, Rivers State

The purpose of this study was to determine the roles of cooperatives in rural development in Ikwerre and Emohua Local Government Areas, Rivers State. The study was guided by five objectives from which five research questions were derived. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. A total population of 525 cooperators was used for the study. A structured questionnaire on a 4 point scale titled Roles of Cooperatives in Rural Development in Ikwerre and Emohua Local Government Areas, Rivers State questionnaire was used to elicit responses from the respondents (cooperators in Emohua and Ikwerre local government areas). The validity was conducted by three experts from Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Rivers State University and University of Port Harcourt. The internal consistency was adopted to check the reliability of the instrument for data collection and was computed using Chronbach Alpha which yielded a reliability .74, .72, .82, .94 and .81 with and overall relaibity of .81. Mean, standard deviation and z-test were the statistical tools used for answering the research question and testing the hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed the contributions of the cooperatives Rural Development in Ikwerre and Emohua Local Government Areas were low. Hypotheses 1, 3, 4 and 5 were accepted while hypotheses 2 was rejected at .05 confidence level. It was recommended among others that the government and non-governmental agencies should provide loans with favorable terms and conditions to cooperative societies.