Poverty in Nigeria is more prevalent in therural sector due to dwindling and inequitabledistribution of real income. Remittances (money and goods sent by migrants to relativesback home) can be poverty reducing. However,the extent to which remittances affectpoverty and income inequality has not been adequately documented inNigeria.This paperuses a large, nationally-representative household survey to analyse the impact of domesticremittances (from Nigeria) and foreign remittances (from African and other countries) onpoverty in rural Nigeria. The socioeconomic characteristics showed that on the average,households that received foreign remittanceshad older heads (61.7± 19.7 years), smallerhousehold size (4.0 ± 2.5), bigger land size(18.53±26.5 ha), higherliteracy rate (0.50 ±0.5) and non-poor (0.08 ±0.3) with higher annual per capita expenditure (₦111,768 ±₦179,868). Poverty analysis showed that both types of remittances reduce the level,depth and severity of poverty in rural Nigeria.However, the size of the poverty reductiondepends on how poverty is being measured. The paper finds that poverty is reduced morewhen domestic, as opposed to foreign remittances are included inhousehold income, andwhen poverty is measured by the more sensitive poverty measures: poverty gap andsquared poverty gap. At a poverty line of₦23,733 per annum, a 10%increase in domesticremittances decreased Poverty Incidence(PI), Poverty Gap (PG) and Squared PovertyGap (SPG) by 1.80%, 1.60% and 1.60% while10% rise in foreign remittances reducedpoverty incidence (PI), Poverty gap (PG) and Squared poverty gap (SPG) by 0.86%,0.62% and0.62% respectively in rural Nigeria. Across GPZs, While 10% increase inforeign remittances reduced PI (-0.88%) in North-Central (NC) it had no effect in NE(0.00%). Same increase in domestic remittances reduced PI, PG, SPG most in the SS (-0.29%, -1.85% and -0.75%) and leastin NE (-0.09%, -0.82% and -0.22%

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The study was conducted to identify and specify gender tasks and roles in vegetable production with ultimate goal of better targeting the resources in agricultural sector. One hundred and twenty vegetable farmers were surveyed in Ikorodu local government area of Lagos State. Multistage stage sampling technique was used to select one hundred and twenty (120) vegetable farmers as the sample for the study.Data was collected by means of structured questionnaire. Percentages, Means and Frequencies were the main descriptive statistical tools utilized while Pearsons' correlation coefficients were estimated to ascertain the association between women participation and selected socioeconomic variables. The findings revealed that 87.50% of females and 91.07% male vegetable farmers fall between the ages of 20-50 years with a mean age of 50.85 years. 65.61% of females and 30.36% of males' vegetable farmers had formal education while none of the vegetable farmers receive post-secondary education. The role of women in majority of the cases was supportive in nature while the dominative role in most of the cases was performed by men.Correlation analysis revealed that Age, marital status, farming experience and Farm size were positively related with women participation in vegetable production. Education had no relationship with women participation in vegetable production. It was suggested that projects and programmes that aim to increase vegetable production should be designed to address the complementary roles that men and women farmers play.

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Article HistoryKeywords Credit cooperatives Agriculture Capital formation Rice farmer Lagos stateThis study set out to examine capital formation among rice farmers who belong to rice farmers' credit cooperative and to isolate factors that determined why some farmer accumulate capital more than others using Itoikin rice farmers' cooperative society. The study draws on two sources of data namely household level surveys and secondary data to get insight about the size and composition of capital formation among rice farmers. The results showed that on average, farmers were 50 years with about 4 years of education, 6 persons in household size and about ₦73,004.37 as mean income. Capital Formation takes the form of agricultural land, rice, agricultural machinery and equipment. The results further showed that about one-quarter of the net addition to fixed capital come from household savings and the rest three-quarter are borrowed from Cooperative and other sources. Regression results indicate that the most important factors determining the level of capital formation are age, the income from rice, Loan from cooperative and other sources and farm holdings. We also found that an increase in the average education of the farmers increases agricultural capital significantly. Education of farmers/rural dwellers should be at the front burner of all rural transformation agenda. Contribution/ Originality:The study documents that capital formation took the form of agricultural land, rice agricultural machinery and equipment. One-quarter of the net addition to fixed capital comes majorly from farmer's savings and borrowing from cooperative. Age, Rice income, Cooperative borrowing and education are important determinant of level of capital formation.