Abstract:
This study focused on the development of resource management programme in sorghum production enterprises for training secondary school graduates for employment in Kwara and Kogi States, Nigeria. Six research questions were answered by the study and six hypotheses were formulated and tested at the probability of 0.05. Research and Development design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 1,624 made up of eight lecturers of Agricultural Education from University of Nigeria Nsukka, 61 Lecturers from Colleges of Education, 499 Teachers of Agricultural Science in Secondary Schools, 239 Extension Agents in Kwara and Kogi States, 425 registered Sorghum processors and 392 registered Sorghum Marketers in Kwara and Kogi States. The sample for the study was 692 made of eight Lecturers of Agricultural Education from University of Nigeria Nsukka, 61 Lecturers in Colleges of Education, 200 Teachers of Agricultural Science in Secondary Schools, 96 Extension Agents, 170 registered sorghum processors and 157 registered sorghum marketers in Kwara and Kogi States. Five sets of instruments were used for data collection for the study. The five sets of questionnaire were face-validated by one expert each from these institutions: Department of Agricultural Education, University of Nigeria Nsukka; Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, University of Ilorin; Department of Curriculum Studies, University of Ilorin; Department of Crop Production, College of Agriculture, Mokwa, Niger State; and one sorghum processor from Wakilin Mata Sorghum Processing Industry, Ilorin; their suggestions were used to produce the final instrument used for the study. Cronbach Alpha method was utilized to determine the internal consistency of the five sets of questionnaire items in which a coefficient of 0.86 was obtained for programme objectives and packaging procedure, 0.79 for sorghum growing enterprise, 0.84 for sorghum processing enterprise, 0.81 for sorghum marketing enterprise and 0.79 for training procedure with an average of 0.82. Data for the study were collected with the help of six research assistants. The data collected were analyzed using weighted mean to answer the research questions and standard deviation to determine the spread of the respondents around the mean in their responses while t-test statistics and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05. Based on the data analysed, the study identified three objectives of each sorghum enterprises (growing, processing and marketing), seven clusters with 105 resource management skills in sorghum growing enterprise, six clusters with 82 resource management skills in sorghum processing enterprise, four clusters with 39 resource management skills in sorghum marketing enterprise, 25 procedures for training secondary school graduates in the three enterprises (growing, processing and marketing) and six procedures for packaging each sorghum production enterprise into a programme. The result of the hypotheses tested showed that there were no significant difference in the mean ratings of respondents on programme objectives, sorghum growing enterprise, sorghum processing enterprise, sorghum marketing enterprise, training procedure and packaging procedure. Based on these findings, the study recommended among others that governments of Kwara and Kogi tates should direct the management of skill acquisition centres in the states to integrate the developed programmes in sorghum production enterprises into skill acquisition centers for training secondary school graduates and other interested individuals for employment in sorghum production.
