Indeterminate Employment Opportunities Available for Cooperative Graduates in Nigeria: Challenges and Remedies

 Indeterminate Employment Opportunities Available for Cooperative Graduates in Nigeria: Challenges and Remedies

Dr Okafo Okoreaffia
Department of Cooperative Economics and Management, Federal Polytechnic, Nekede, Owerri
DOI: https://doi.org/10.51584/IJRIAS.2023.8728
Received: 16 July 2023; Accepted: 20 July 2023; Published: 21 August 2023

Abstract: The cooperative graduate is trained to emerge as an all-knowing-cooperative-expert at the zenith of his practice because he is taught to be a lawyer, accountant, finance and business management expert, magistrate and consultant. Many cooperative training institutes both in Nigeria and abroad are producing graduates with these prospects at different levels of cooperative professionalism capable of, and ready to render these valuable services to employers of labour. Unfortunately, many of these experts do not know where to find employment after graduation. This paper interrogated 314 diplomates and ambassadors of the cooperative department over a period of 4 years and identifies several employment opportunities available to them which include consultancy and self-employment. The paper also identifies the constraints they face especially that of ignorance of employers of labour and finally made recommendations that will help them become more visible in the employment market including mentioning cooperative courses as one of the invited disciplines during advertisement of business and management vacancies.

Keywords: Cooperative Graduate, Employment Opportunities, Quality Education and Training, Cooperative Expert

I. Introduction

Higher institutions bring about learning that moulds a lifetime, learning that transmits the heritage of millennia, learning that shapes the future. In addition to general education provided centrally, specialized training provides instruction in a wide range of education and business areas. The essence of education is to supply manpower to tend the grinding mills of the global economy (Garrovillas, 2008) and to realise man’s full potentials. That is why the United Nations established four pillars of education namely- learning to be, learning to learn, learning to do and learning to live with others. Such education should promote effective communication, critical thinking, knowledge integration and social responsibility (Fabella, 2009).

A cooperative training institute is established as a specialised cooperative training centre to provide operationally focused training of the highest possible standard in a modern professional environment by the most efficient means for the enhancement of the student’s abilities in cooperative administration, on the one hand, the benefit of the cooperative sector which he is specifically trained to administer, on the other hand and the development of society generally.

II. Literature Review

Business organizations are classified on the basis of ownership. The form of ownership has implications for the formation intricacies, growth and continuity of the firm, the methods of raising funds, extent of liability of the owners, the distribution of profits as well as management techniques. There are the Sole-Proprietorships, the Partnerships, the Joint-Stock Companies, the Statutory Corporations and the Cooperative Societies.
The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) while issuing the Cooperative Identity Statement in 1995 defined a cooperative as an autonomous association of persons, united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise. It also issued nine cooperative values and seven cooperative principles as part of the special identity of cooperatives that makes it unique.
The principles of cooperation spring from the values and they are the guidelines by which co-operatives put their values into practice.
Cooperatives evolved from Britain, spread throughout Europe, to America and India and then from there to other developing countries. Unlike in Europe where cooperatives were formed through the initiative of voluntary leaders as self-help organisations, in India, government decided, for obvious reasons, to take an active part in the propagation and promotion of cooperative societies. This reflected in the Indian Cooperative Societies Acts of 1904 and 1912. The important innovation of the Indian cooperative law was that it initiated a new type of cooperative society: the state sponsored cooperative. The basic idea of this new scheme was to create autonomous, self-reliant cooperatives in the long run but to substitute the lacking technical knowledge and initiative of the rural population for a transition period by the know-how of officials of a specialised government agency headed by the Registrar of Cooperative Societies.