INFLUENCE OF INFORMATION DISSEMINATION ON THE ACHIEVEMENT OF MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS (MDGs) IN KOGI STATE, NIGERIA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title page                                                                                                   i

Certification                                                                                                      ii

Approval Page                                                                                                         iii

Dedication                                                                                                  iv

Acknowledgement                                                                                 v

Table of Contents                                                                                    vii

List of Tables                                                                                            ix

Abstract                                                                                                x

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study                                                                                1

Statement of the Problem                                                                                   10

Purpose of the Study                                                                               11

Research Question                                                                                           11

Significance of the Study                                                                               12

Scope of the Study                                                                                     13

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW                                         14

Conceptual Framework                                                                          14

Concept of Millennium Development Goals                                                      16

Concept of Information/Information Dissemination                                   20

Information Sources                                                                               32

Challenges of Information Dissemination in Achieving the MDGs                 34

Strategies for Enhancing Information Dissemination in Review of Related Empirical Studies                                                                                     38

Summary of Literature Review                                                                    44

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHOD                                              46

Design of the Study                                                                                     46

Area of the Study                                                                                                 46

 Population of the Study                                                                             47

Sample and Sampling Technique                                                                      47

Instrument for Data Collection                                                                         48

Validation of the Instrument                                                                              49

Method of Data Collection                                                                            49

Method of Data Analysis                                                                                49

CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS                                                              51

Summary of Results                                                                                            59

CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION, IMPLICATION, RECOMMENDATION, LIMITATION, SUGGESTION AND CONCLUSION,

Discussion of Findings                                                                               60

Implications of the Study                                                                              65

Recommendations                                                                                        66

Limitation of the Study                                                                                       66

Suggestion for Further Studies                                                                      67

Conclusion                                                                                                     67

REFERENCES                                                                                          70

APPENDIX A                                                                                                               76

APPENDIX B                                                                                                        83

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1:      Mean rating and Standard deviation of respondents on the channels of information dissemination on achievement of MDGs                                   51        

Table 2:      Mean rating and Standard deviation of respondents on the sources consulted to gather information for dissemination towards the achievement of MDGs                                                              53                    

Table 3:      Mean rating and Standard deviation of respondents on the influence of information dissemination on the achievement of MDGs in the area of education, poverty reduction and health                     54        

Table 4:      Mean rating and Standard deviation of respondents on the challenges of information dissemination on achievement of MDGs.          56

Table 5:      Mean rating and Standard deviation of respondents on the strategies that will enhance information dissemination on achievement of MDGs.          58

ABSTRACT

The study examined the Influence of Information Dissemination on the Achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) In Kogi State, Nigeria. Specifically, five purposes and five research Questions guided the study.  Related literature was reviewed under conceptual framework, related empirical studies. The study adopted descriptive survey design. The area of the study was Kogi west senatorial district, the population of the study was 603 information staff in eight information agencies in Kogi West Senatorial District of Kogi State. The sample of the study was 302 respondents representing 50% of the total population. A multi-stage sampling procedure was adopted in selecting the sample for the study. Two instruments were used for data collection i.e. the questionnaire and face-to-face interview which were validated by three experts from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Direct delivery and retrieval method was employed in the administration and retrieval of the questionnaire in order to minimize wastage. On the other hand, a five item scheduled interview was employed to elicit responses from the respondents. A face to face interview with key respondents was purposively carried out by the researcher. Mean and standard deviations were use answer the research questions that guided the study, therefore, a mean rating of 2.50 and above was used as criterion level for accepting an item.          The result of the study showed among other things that; The channels of information dissemination towards the achievement of MDGs are library, print media, radio, TV, twitter, facebook interpersonal relationship, town crier among others, the sources consulted to gather information for dissemination include books, newspapers, magazines, research reports, online/internets, journals and consultation with the grassroots, it was also found out that proper information dissemination influences the achievement of MDGs in Kogi state.It was recommended among other things that there should be provision of adequate ICT facilities like the internet that can be accessible to everybody, there should be provision of adequate manpower, more people should be trained on the use of computer, the government should carry out public awareness campaign on the objectives of MDGs, adequate public libraries should be built and technical expertise to install and maintain electronic networks should be trained and above all, adequate fund should be provided.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

The problem of development has occupied the attention of scholars, activists, politicians, and developmental workers, local and international organizations for many years with an increased speed in the last decade. Though there are different perspectives to development, there is a general consensus that development could lead to good change manifested in increased capacity of people to have control over materials access, intellectual resources and ideology, and obtained physical necessities of life such as food, clothing, shelter, employment, equality, sustainable development, participate in government, adequate education among others. This is why some people have argued that the purpose of development is to improve people’s lives by expanding their choices, freedom and dignity. As the world was entering a new millennium, acknowledging the centrality of human development, the United Nations General Assembly in its millennium summit in 2002, adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are commitments made by world governments under the auspices of the United Nations Millennium Declaration in September 2000, to address the problem of poverty and promote sustainable development. Echezona and Okafor (2005) opine that, millennium development goals repress ent a global partnership that has grown from the commitments and targets established at the world summits of the 1990s.

 The millennium development goals (MDGs) are designed to bring about a positive change in the lives of billions of people in the world. Countries of both the developing and developed world may commit themselves to provide the resources and policies to attain these goals. The MDGs are drawn from the actions and targets contained in the millennium declaration that was adopted by 189 nations and signed by 147 heads of state and government. According to the argument of United Nations, attention has been drawn to the reality of the world that countries are underdeveloped with precarious development indices. More than 1.2 billion people or about 20 percent of world’s population survive on less than US $1 per day. The millennium summit held from 6^th to 8^th September, 2000 in New York, the largest gathering declaration committing nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets that has become known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). At the millennium summit, world leaders agreed on a set of goals to guide global development in the 21­­­­­­­­­­­­­­^st century.   The MDGs has eight goals to be achieved by the year 2015 that responded to the world’s main development challenges. The Eight Goals according to United Nations (2000) as cited in Selim (2003) are to: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve Universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development. The summit went ahead to enumerate these eight goals considered of paramount important and termed them millennium goals.

 It is true that MDGs may reflect a global commitment to address the issue of human poverty in a time-bound manner. But even with all the good intentions of the world, realization of the commitments may not be easy and the path toward achieving the MDGs may not be smooth one. The MDGs are designed to bring about a positive change to the lives of billions of people in the world. They summarize the development aspiration of the world as a whole. They include universally accepted human values and right such as freedom from hunger, the right to basic education and health, a responsibility to future generation, developing a global partnership for development, poverty eradication and gender equality. Despite these laudable objective and importance of MDGs, people seem to remain in abject poverty in Africa with no proper awareness about health care service. It is not yet clear the extent to which the information agencies such as libraries, Mass media, archives, information and documentation centers and information brokerage firms have been involved in the dissemination of information to the public about the goals and strategies for realizing the MDGs. The failure to disseminate the needed information may hinder the realization of the MDGs in Kogi West Senatorial District which make people in that area to continue to suffer from poverty and illiteracy, child and maternal mortality may be on the increase and this may adversely affect the development in the state as well.

In today’s world there are several trends that may be acting as major structural constraints towards achieving the MDGs. No doubt, there are regional as well as country variations in terms of these constraints, yet a few key common ones easily identified include: Persistent human poverty: this means many developing countries, nearly one in every five people is undernourished, more than 850 million adult are illiterate, more than 1 billion people are without access to safe water and about 2 billion people are without electricity: High inequality: inequality takes many forms- in terms of access to basic social services or productive resources, income, human development outcomes and between socio-economic groups. There are certainly overlaps and mutual reinforcement of various dimensions: Economic stagnation, at constant inequality level, a country needs to grow by 3% or more to double income in a generation. Yet of 155 countries with data, only 30 had annual per capita income growth rates 3% in the 1990s. Among the rest, 54 countries saw annual average income fall, and in 71 countries annual income growth was less than 3%: Social exclusion: this denies the potentials of groups of people to make significant contribution to the development process, and it excludes people from participating in the decisions that affect their lives and it raises the fear of human insecurity among affected groups. All these denial and exclusion also make the achievement of MDGs quite difficult: Environmental degradation: this poses a serious threat to MDGs, not only in terms of Goal 7, but also on the other goals through its human impacts and it also negatively affect human well-being: HIV/AIDS: today, about 42million people are living with HIV/AIDS, not counting the 22 million who have already died of the disease. More than 70% of those affected today and it has also left 13 million orphans in its wake.

 Nigerian Government have done so many things in order to achieve the set goals and also have specifically address the problems of poverty  reduction, education, gender equality and empower  women, reduce child mortality, combat HIV And AIDS, malaria and other diseases and ensure environmental sustainability in the country, some policy initiatives have been put in place such as National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) and  these was designed to drive the long term goals of poverty reduction, employment generation, wealth creation, and value reorientation in the country. According to Federal Government Report (2005) the approach, apart from making the different tiers of government to use poverty reduction as the target of development priorities, it will also bring about a coordinate approach to managing poverty reduction in Nigeria.

 Education: in order to achieve the MDGs, Universal Basic Education Act passed in 2004 provides compulsory free universal basic education for all children of primary and junior secondary school age in Nigeria (Ali, 2006) which further reinforces the national primary education goals and set targets for attaining universal primary education by 2015.

            Gender equality and empower women: Nigerian government have adopted some policies to achieve MDGs such as the National Policy on women which was adopted in 2000, articulates gender mainstreaming in relevant sectors and Female Functional Literacy for the Health (FFLH) and the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) is also responding to the problems of illiterate and poor rural women of child bearing age (15-49), who have missed school through Female Functional Literacy for Health (FFLH) project (Federal Government Report, 2005).

 Reduce child mortality: Nigerian government have elaborated on  so many reform such as National Health Insurance Scheme, launched in mid-2005, the scheme will pool fund for health system development as well as provide financial protection for insured.

 Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases: the federal government of Nigeria in order to achieve MDGs has established the National Action committee on AIDS (NACA) to combat the HIV/AIDS menace. Ensure environmental sustainability: Nigerian government has developed many policies to enhance the quality of environmental management. Some of them include National Erosion & flood control policy 2004 policy Guideline on sanitary inspection of premises, the researcher has discovered that, the above mentioned MDGs have not been implemented in Kogi West Senatorial District of Kogi State. And this may lead to high mortality rate, high rate of HIV/AIDS, high rate of poverty, dropping out of school among others.

            Operationally, millennium development goals (MDGs) can be defined as commitment made by the United Nations to encourage development by improving social and economic conditions in world.  Some of these MDGs could be achieve through information which may help individuals to benefit from government provisions.

 One could argue that information has come to represent the prime commodity of the present age. Although the developing countries of the world may not have come to a firm grasp with this reality, it cannot but be a statement, if not a reaffirmation of an already established fact in the particular case of the developed nations. It is now a common-place observation that the material prosperity of a nation is linked almost directly to its information wealth and vice-versa. According to MeCreadie and Rice (1999) information can be defined as what is transmitted in a message from a sender to a receiver. The receiver interprets the message as intended by the sender. There may be added value as the message is disseminated or exchanged. MeCreadie and Rice (1999) asserted that, information derived from a message by a reader or receiver depends on a wide range of factors all of which affect his/her understanding of that message. These include geographical location; social interest, educational, and professional status.

According to Edoka as cited in Echezona (2005), Information can be any relevant fact or idea or assemblage of data of useful purpose communicated with the aim of addressing, influencing or eliciting response that is capable of development. Afolabi (2003), defined information as knowledge communicated or received in relation to a particular subject. Eze (1999) opine that, for a developing nation such as Nigeria that is characterized by problems or poor state of affairs like mass poverty, poor condition of living, poor infrastructural facilities, poor health care, economic under development, primitive practices, customs and difficult technologies, tension, suspicion among others.  Information could be important because, it may be needed in order to improve the environments in terms of social, economic, cultural and political wellbeing of the people. Whether published for mass circulation or result of research efforts made available to colleagues in form of report books and non-printed materials, information helps organization to be well managed and organized.

Also, Jacobson (1960) as cited in Madden (2000) sees information as a resource. He asserts that information comprises of three components (addresser, addressee and message). While Van cited in Meyer (2005) views the importance of information resources as one of those needed for societal development. Meyer (2005) gave nine basic similarities between information and other traditional resources to include: Information is acquired at a definite, measurable cost; information has a definite value which may be quantified and treated as an accountable asset; information consumption can be quantified; cost accounting can be applied to control the cost of information; information has a clear life cycle; information may be processed and refined so that raw materials (e.g. database) are converted into finished product; substitute for any specific item or collections of pieces of information are available and may be quantified and choices are available to management in making trade-offs between different grades, types and cost of information (Meyer 2005 as cited in Eaton and Bawden, 1991).

It is believed that information has so many sources. That is, it must be generated from some where. Statrasts (2004) asserted that, information source is an institution or individual that creates or brings about a message.  Abdulwahab (2007) opine that, the availability and free flow of information through an effective dissemination network represents a necessary pre-condition for the achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Abdulwahab further stated that a combination of experience and new knowledge will, most likely, bring about knowledge, which is quite vital for the healthy development of any society. This is so much that development and prosperity have come to be as knowledge-based as they are also dependent upon the dissemination and application of different types of information. Ochogwu (2007) has identified the following as channels of information dissemination; Libraries, mass media, archives, information and documentation centre and information brokerage firms among others.

 For the purpose this study, information can be defined as fact or detail communicated from the sender to receiver.  Information constitutes message of human experience-that is, what is transmitted, a signal or stimulus. It assumes a response potential, transferred physically or electronically; evaluated or raw; accurate or in accurate but always sought in an evaluated accurate sense. It could be in any medium, in any language or on any subject. How if it is then true that information, as often expressed by many experts, is a basic human need, it therefore becomes even more fundamental for it to be disseminated in such ways as could ensure its free and equal accessibility by every member of a given society, irrespective of racial, religious, geo-political and economic status of the recipients. Proper availability of information may lead to information dissemination.

Information dissemination is the process of conveying knowledge or fact from one person to another person. The key partners in the development of information dissemination component have free of management system. According to Ajibero(2011) information dissemination includes the following: traditional, state and local, public sector agencies (transportation and public works, transit, toll authorities, law enforcement), commercial media, private sector traffic reporting services (distributing through commercial media venues or through direct subscription to motorist), local fleet operators (delivery services, taxis, among others). In some cases, the owners/operators of major traffic generators (mails, tourist attractions, annual special event promotions among others) could also be important partners to include in the decision making process. Robinson (2000) defined information dissemination as a process of making news or theories widely circulated with the aim of sowing widely. Information dissemination means method one uses to commutate knowledge, facts known to others, (Adepoju, 2001).

In the same vein, Adepoju (2001) opine that, information dissemination involve passing information or references to people about available current materials which may be of interest and value to them.Abdulwahab(2007) opine that, the efficiency of technologies generated and disseminated depends on effective communication which is the key process of information dissemination. Information dissemination may be emphasized for changes and development. The citizens of a country could be reached with the necessary information in order for the country to move forward on the development continuum. In view of this, Issa (2004) asserts that in Nigeria, the populace suffers from an acute low productivity, social and economic retrogression due mainly to ignorance which also results from either inadequate or total absence of information dissemination.

The information dissemination agents have the responsibility of disseminating information as they may provide the public with opportunities for information. These opportunities will be accessible to all groups of society irrespective of age, gender, and ethnic affiliation (IFLA, 2003).  Information dissemination plays important role in achieving the MDGs in the sense that it gives practical information for problem solving, it spreads awareness in the world about people’s rights, privileges as well as their responsibilities, it sensitize people on the  importance and relevance of information among others. Information could be disseminated through channel of information dissemination. Channel of information dissemination refers to the means of transfer or exchange of information from person to person or from one place to another. It is an action that produces a reaction, whether positive or negative, if communication has taken place (Omogor, 2013). In addition, Fayose (2002) says that, information delivery is not a one way affair. There must be a sender to transmit the message and receiver to make appropriate decision on how the rest of the exchange should continue. This involves the exchange of ideas, facts, opinion, attitudes and beliefs between people.

Omogor (2013) adds that, the ability to communicate and pass on information is a key factor in all culture whether literate or not. Therefore, there are channels of information dissemination about MDG to Kogi state citizens irrespective of their educational status. There are channels through which information are disseminated in order to achieve the information need of people especially the MDGs. Some of these channels according to Dowlin (2009) are; Libraries such as national library, public library, academic library among others. Mass media such as: electronic media example radio and television, print media: such as magazine, bulletin, newspaper among others, information centers: such as information and documentation centers and information brokerage firm and archives, local media: such as town crier and repackaging of information, and ICT/social networks: such as Youtube, Facebook and GSM.

The development of society and individuals can only be attained through the ability of well-informed citizens to exercise the democratic rights and to play active roles in the society (Drotner, 2005). Therefore, if the desired information about MDGs is disseminated to the public it could go a long way towards the achievement of the MDGs.  Achievement of MDGs can be defined as ability of the nation to accomplish the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

payment