GENDER ANALYSIS OF FACTORS AFFECTING FACILITATION OF AGRICULTURAL PROGRAMMES: INSIGHT FROM FADAMA 111 DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME IN NIGERIA Dimelu,

This study sought to ascertain factors that affect facilitation of agricultural programmes as perceived by different gender groups among facilitators of FADAMA 111 development programme in Enugu State. It ascertained the perception of the gender groups on the organizational, job related and employee related factors. The data were analyzed with mean, standard deviation and t-test. Results indicate that out of the various identified organizational factors that affect facilitators in Enugu National Fadama Development Project III only one, monitoring and Evaluation System (t= -3.08*) was perceived differently by both men and women facilitators. From the various identified job related factors that affect facilitators in Enugu NFDP III only insufficient authority (t= 1.17) was perceived differently by both men and women facilitators. The results also show that from the various identified employee/personnel factors that affect facilitators in Enugu NFDP III, involvement in social meetings, involvement in house chores, size of family, relationship with spouse, proximity to client and extended family burden were perceived differently by both men and women facilitators. Based on the findings of the study, some factors were identified to affect the facilitators differently because of their genders differences. Hence, there is need to consider these factors and ensure balanced working conditions for both men and women facilitators in the NFDP III. This will help to ultimately improve their job performance. Contact us for full article. Email: info@agrosciencejournal.com


INTRODUCTION
Glaring decline in production and productivity has continued to characterize Nigerian agricultural sector thereby limiting the ability of the sector to perform its traditional role in economic development.In order to break this cycle and improve the performance of the agricultural sector, the Nigerian government, over the years, introduced and implemented several policies and programmes aimed at revamping the sector (Ajibefun and Aderinola, 2004).Among these are the Farm Settlement Scheme (1960's), the National Accelerated Food Production Programme (1973), River Basin Authority (1975), Agricultural Development Project (1985).Others include First National Fadama Development Project (1991), National Special Programme for Food Security (2003) and Second National Fadama Development project (2004) and the Third National Fadama Project (2008).The World Bank assisted Nigeria with the establishment of Phase I of the National Fadama Development Project which was implemented during the period of 1993-1999.National Fadama Development Project (NFDP I) focused mainly on crop production and largely neglected support of post production activities such as commodity processing, storage and marketing (downstream agricultural sector).The success of the first generation of NFDPI prompted the Federal Government of Nigeria to request the World Bank for the preparation of a follow-up project (NFDP II) (World Bank, 2003b;Blench and Ingawa, 2004).
The implementation of the second generation NFDP II took place in 17 States and the federal capital Territory (Projects coordinating unit -Special Projects for Food Security, 2003).The NFDP II was one of the major instruments for achieving overall development of the agricultural sector in Nigeria.The project was designed to assist project contracted facilitators and participating Local Government Areas to undertake projectrelated activities at the level of Fadama http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/as.v14i1.2Community Associations (FCAs) and other beneficiary groups.It was designed to operate for six years (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) with a goal of contributing to poverty reduction in Nigeria.The recorded increase that agricultural production achieved through the NFDP II compared with the situation before the adoption of the Fadama approach encouraged the Nigerian Government to establish the National Fadama Development Project III (NFDP III) on a nation-wide basis in all the states with focus on rural poor living below one (1) dollar per day.The NFDP III was introduced in 2008.
The NFDP III was initiated in 2008 to correct the weakness of the earlier extension mechanism in Nigeria.Prior to its introduction, agricultural extension diffusion mechanism started with the conventional diffused or stereotyped ministry-operated extension in 1954.This was followed by the project development approach, the sector/community extension, the university based extension, the integrated rural development approach and the farmer focused extension (Conroy, 2003).The Agricultural Development Project (ADP) and the first National Fadama Project since 1991 operated the training and visit extension under the unified agricultural extension system.In this system, the village extension worker is the officer in direct contact with the farmer.According to Nagel (1994), this was originally conceived as one way of organizing the Ministry of Agriculture based extension system and to solve some specific problems of extension service but has been criticized for being rigid, top-down, supply driven, unsustainable, anti-participatory and serves only a few favoured farmers in a favoured area.These identified weaknesses showed that there was a need to review and redirect the efforts of the extension components in agricultural programmes/policies and so the need for facilitation mechanism.
The central principle of the CDD aproach of the Fadama III project is to produce competent facilitators who will live in the communities with these farmers making sure they have access to relevant information and resources (Enugu State Fadama Handbook, 2010).Facilitators under the NFDP are professionals charged with helping the individual beneficiary and Fadama Community Associations and their constituent Fadama Users' Groups to articulate and prioritize their problems and opportunities so that they can be tackled in order to achieve the goals and objectives of NFDP (NFDO, 2004).Until recently the practice was for the facilitators to visit individual contact farmers.Recent effort is on organizing farmers into 15 groups of a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 25 members with like interest for any livelihood activity in agriculture (economic interest group) {EIG}.The facilitators in NFDP III have the responsibility to make sure that the planning process is truly participatory; that the small scale projects which the farmers must have identified as their economic interest venture/activity are implemented in accordance with guidelines and safeguard policies (Fadama GEF, PAD, 2010).The facilitators ensure that the capacity of the FCA is built for collective action and quality.The State Fadama Co-ordinating Office (SFCO) organize monthly forum for the facilitators.The main thrust of which centres on the development of the facilitators to improve their capacity.The role and responsibilities of the facilitators in NFDP III also include the needs assessment of the FCA.This is designed to show long term involvement and particiapation for the Fadama users.The facilitators under the third National Fadama Development Project have the unique responsibility of shaping the course of the project, relating directly with the beneficiaries at the community level (Ingawa, 2004).These facilitators include men, women and youth.Many factors influence facilitators' role performance effectiveness (Daudu and Madukwe, 2012) Analysis of gender related factors that affect these facilitators in NFDPIII is vital.Low and declining productivity of Nigerian agricultural sector is caused by many factors including gender imbalance in resources accessibility, inadequate and poorly funded and maintained production infrastructure, poor agricultural research and extension systems and inadequate availability and distribution of key inputs (Anon, 2002;Ezeh 2012).NFDP facilitators and beneficiaries perceive factors that affect their performance differently.On the part of the beneficiary NFDP farmers, Alabi, Ogbonna, Lawal and Awoyinka (2014), noted that the second national Fadama development project was successful and gender sensitive and beneficiaries including women were productive.Hence there was need to check the gender dimensions of the factors affecting facilitation of Fadama III development programme in Enugu state, Nigeria.On this premise, the present study was initiated.

Material and Methods
The Fadama III project, were used, giving a total of 68 facilitators.This was used in order to get a good number of facilitators.
The organizational factors that affect the facilitators were measured by asking facilitators to indicate the degree to which each of the 16 different organizational items affect them on a five-point Likert type scale.The scale was as follows: 1= No Extent (NE); 2 = Very Little Extent (VLE); 3 = Little Extent (LE); 4 = Great Extent (GE); 5 = A Very Great Extent (VGE).The mean degree of effect was calculated.The organizational factor level for each group of respondents was computed by dividing the grand mean score of each group by number of the organizational factor items ( 16).
The job-related factors of the facilitators were measured by asking each of them to indicate the degree to which each of the 23 different aspects of job-related situation affects them on a five-point Likert-type scale.The five points were as follows: 1 = Not At All (NAA); 2 = Rarely (R); 3 = Sometimes (S); 4 = Often (O) and 5 = Always (A).Then the mean degree of effect of each of the 23 different aspects of job-related situation was calculated for each group of respondents by dividing the total job-related situation score of the group by the number of respondents that made up the group.The job-related situation for each group of respondents was computed by dividing the grand mean of job related score of the group by the number of the different aspects of job related tension (23).
The employee related factors were measured by asking each of them to indicate the degree of agreement by which each of the 20 different employee attitude help them deal better with their job on a five point Likert type scale.The 5 points scale is as follows: 1 = Not at All (NAA); 2 = Rarely (R); 3= Sometimes (S); 4 = Often (O); and 5 = Always (A).The differences in the perception of the gender groups were gotten using t-test.

Conceptual Framework
The success of National Fadama Development Project Phase III (NFDP III) as an agricultural programme depends essentially on the level or quality of job performance of its facilitators.The performance of facilitators are influenced by certain important factors such as gender differences, organizational factors, jobrelated factors and certain employee related factors developed by these facilitators to enable them cope favourably with the adverse effects of the job-related issues.Thus either the personal characteristics of the facilitators and/or their organizational factors and/or their job-related factors and employee related factors could constitute constraints in their bid to achieve high job performance.These factors have to be positive for the job performance of the facilitators to be high.This is presented schematically below.Block A points out the organizatonal factors that affect the performance of the facilitators.Block B gives a list of Job related factors that bother the facilitators.While Block C highlights the personnel/employee related factors that affect the performance of the facilitators.

Perception on organizational factors that affect facilitators' performance of Fadama projects by gender
Data in Table 1 shows that from the various identified organizational factors that affect facilitators in Enugu NFDP III only monitoring and Evaluation System (t= -3.08*) was perceived differently by both men and women facilitators.The remaining 15 factors were perceived in the same way by both men and women facilitators.The similarity in perception of the gender groups on majority of the identified organizational factors show that their perceptions are true of the organizational factors that affect performance in Fadama III Development Project.The only one problem perceived differently could be as a result of gender perception.It could be that majority of staff involved in monitoring and evaluation system in NFDP III are men since they perceived it lower (2.90) then the women (3.66).
The  2 show that from the various identified job related factors that affect facilitators in Enugu NFDP III only one (1), insufficient authorithy (t= 1.17) was perceived differently by both men and women facilitators.The only one problem perceived differently could be as a result of discrimination in assigning authority to men and women facilitators.This implies that there is need to include women in positions of higher authority.The remaining 19 factors were perceived in the same way the two gender groups.
The similarity of the perception of both men and women facilitators on majority of the factors show that their perceptions were true of the job related factors that bother facilitators in Fadama III Development Project.This implies that the perception of the facilitators can be used to formulate policies that will improve Agricultural programmes of this kind in the future.Hence, job related factors include: insufficient authority (men = 3.23; women = 2.84), lack of promotion opportunities (men= 3.37; women =3.27) and too much work (men = 3.26; women =3.73) among others.These implies that these factors hinder effective job performance of both men and women facilitators.It is therefore suggested that these issues should be handled in other to improve their performance.

Perception on employee related factors by gender
Data in Table 3 show that from the various identified employee/personnel factors that affect facilitators in Enugu NFDP III six were perceived differently by both male and female facilitators.The remaining 15 factors were perceived in the same way by both the female and male facilitator.The results show that most of the identified employee related factors were perceived the same way.The similarity of the perception of both male and female facilitators on majority of the employee related factors show that their perceptions are true of the employee related factors that help facilitators in job related issues in Fadama III Development Project.Hence the factors that affect the facilitators include: spending time with friends (t=0.23;p ≤ 0.05), spouse (t=-0.54;p ≤ 0.05) and children or siblings (t=-1.44;p ≤ 0.05) and academic background (t=2.72;p ≤ 0.05) among others.
The few other problems perceived differently could be as a result of the expected roles of women in households.The problems were involvement in social meetings, doing house chores, size of family, relationship with spouse, proximity to client and extended family burden.

CONCLUSIONAND RECOMMENDATION
Many agricultural projects have been planned and implemented with little or no success.NFDP III was implemented based on lessons learnt from successes and failures of other NFDPs that were completed.Gender issues can affect the role performance of facilitators.This study identified gender dimensions of factors that affect facilitators of NFP III.Based on the findings, it could be concluded that there were significant differences between the men and women facilitators in Enugu NFDP III.This was seen in the way they perceived the effect of some organizational factors, job related factors and employee/personnel related factors that affect performance.Hence there is the need to ensure that conditions that enhance performance of men and women are prevalent in the NFDP III as this will ultimately improve job performance for the men and women facilitators.
study was carried out in Enugu State.Enugu State is in South-eastern Nigeria.The population of the study consisted of all facilitators in the Enugu state Fadama III Development Project.The sample size was determined through a purposive sampling procedure.All facilitators In Enugu State Gender Analysis of Factors Affecting Facilitation of Agricultural Programmes: