Farmers’ Perceived Effects of Communal Conflicts on the Delivery of Agricultural Extension Services in North-Central, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined the perceived effects of communal conflicts on the delivery of agricultural extension services to farmers in North-central, Nigeria. The specific objectives were to; describe the socio-economic characteristics of the farmers; determine the perceived effects of communal conflicts on the delivery of agricultural extension services by field extension workers of Agricultural Development Programmes (ADPs) to farmers in the study area, and; identify the relationships between selected socio-economic characteristics and perceived effects of communal conflicts on agricultural extension services delivery. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to obtain a sample size of 391 farmers. Information was elicited using questionnaire, interview schedule and focus group discussion and analysed using frequencies, percentages, mean and Likert-type rating scale and Ordered Logit Regression analysis. The major findings show that the majority of the respondents in the study area perceived communal conflicts to have high effects on accessibility of extension services (x̅=2.50), timeliness of extension services (x̅=2.49), efficiency of extension services (x̅ =2.49), targeting of extension services (x̅=2.48), effectiveness of extension services (x̅=2.41), relevance of extension services (x̅=2.36) and content accuracy of extension services (x̅=2.27). The findings further reveal that sex of the farmers, marital status, educational level, number of extension contacts, farm size and distance from the farming communities to a major town had significant relationships with perceived effects of communal conflicts on extension services delivery. The study recommended that government should adopt policies that would tackle the causes and occurrence of communal conflicts in communities in the country so as to reduce the effect of the conflicts on timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, targeting and usefulness of extension services. Key words: Communal conflicts, extension services, farmers