Importance Of Studying Co-Operative Economics And Management In Institutions

0.1 INTRODUCTION
Prior to the establishment of institute of management and technology Enugu, there existed till 1967 a college of technology up to the ordinary diploma level. An institution of administration which provide short in services training courses for civil servants of various grades and a cooperative college which offered a certificate course in cooperative studies to co-operative aspects from the ministry of industry, trade and cooperative.
These institutions were separated and separately located. The college of technology was parts of the ministry of education and was controlled, directed by the ministry.
Similarly, the institution of administration was controlled by the ministry of establishment, while the cooperative college was directly under the ministry of rural development.
These institutions were staff by civil servants who were posted and re-posted from one department to another according to the need of civil service.
And after 1970, there came the need for higher institution of learning to upgrade the training in the technological and managerial field in which there were several need for manpower development.
The future graduates in the technology and management and their allied field would be more effective by functional training than the programme they offered by the college of technology and to institute of administrations. To the founding father, their main aim was the maximization of management efficiency and of professional and technical expertise and the acquisition of the additional tool for these.
The close coupling of management and technology in the new objectives was needless and not fruitful. The management and technology of today needs training, education, for effective and efficiency satisfaction and fulfillment of itself and role in the world in which applied science entrails more and more problems of both moral and ecological significance. It can no longer afford to be the narrow minded profession concerned with only machine and structure. It must be inculcate with the understanding of the relationship with social setting of its position within the industrial environment.
The personnel must work with other people and therefore must be acquainted with basis of personnel and labour matters. It was as a result of these that the idea of an autonomous IMT was conceived.
In pursuance of these, the executive council of the state agreed to merge the former college of technology and the institute of administration and upgrade their function in 1971. both the institute and college of technology serve under the unified control of the cabinet office on 1st April, 1972.
In October of the same year a provisional council for the proposed new institute was appointed by the administration of the East central state, the council was charged with the responsibility of determining and recommending to government the appropriate structure of an autonomous institution that would produce high quality technologist and technicians. The council persuaded this task with vigour and determination and in early April 1973, it submitted its findings.
On 31st May 1973, an Edict No. 10 titled “The institution of management and technology Edict 1973” was promulgated. The Edict took effect from 1st July 1973 and thus gave birth to institute of management and technology while its first chairman was DR. UKWU.
In October, the institute opened its doors to students admitting 550 students in addition to 300 second year students of 850 students. At the time of opening, there were only 20 senior staff including the Rector, Registrar, Academic staff and four Administrative staff. The institute started with eleven department grouped into three divisions. The first ever convocation of the institute was held on 16th of October 1976 and about 900 graduates received Diploma and higher Diploma.

1.1 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The Department of Co-operative Studies was established as a separate department in the institute of management and technology, Enugu in January 1978.
Before then, cooperative studies was but one of a number of academic programmes within the department of business management and public administration, which had either programmes like Accounting, marketing, etc and was first headed by Dr. S. Umoh.
In fact, IMT was the first institute of higher learning in Nigeria to start a programme in cooperative studies. For many years, it had only one full time lecturer Dr. Enyereibe Onuoha who after a P.HD in sociology from Rome, did his cooperative studies in Canada.
He taught all the cooperative courses in the department except those requiring practical field experience, which he handed over to part time lecturers from as a one year in service programme for newly appointed junior staff of the cooperative department of the ministry of commerce and industry.
After the Nigeria civil was in 1970, the military administration of the Eastern state closed down the cooperative college at Awgu and transferred its duties to institution.
In 1975, the certificate programme in cooperative was upgraded to a two year diploma programme and was no longer targeted on in-service trainees from the ministry but on secondary school leavers processing the minimum institute requirement entry. The department requirement at this time was four credit including English but a pass in Mathematics while other departments required a credit in mathematics.
The reduction in the entry requirement attracted many candidates reaching a peak in 1980/81 when 120 students registered.
In October 1977, two graduates were recruited to bring the number of full time lecturers to three. These were Dr. S. C. Chukwu and Mr. S. Y. Berko. Cooperative become a full fledged department with Dr. S. Chukwu as first head of department. The name was changed to the “Department of cooperative and Management in time with its protégé in Germany. At the same time, a higher diploma programme was introduced.
The name of the programme co-operative Economic and management indicate that the teaching of the subject (co-operative) will rise above the merely descriptive level. It will employ tools of Economics and management in the department to slot into its curriculum courses taken from the field of Economics and management is to taught by experts from their field.
Two historical event that affected the department must be mentioned. In 1987, the federal military government under General Obasanjo favoured the straight three year diploma programme for polytechnics rather than the two-step (ND/HND) four years programme. All IMT programmes (including Co-operative Studies) has to be restructured. But in 1980, the NND (Nigerian National Diploma) certificates was withdrawn by the succeeding civilian Administration and the ND/HND programme restored.
In 1985, the then military governor, Navy Captain A. Madueke ordered the merge of the Anambra state university of technology (ASUTECH) with the IMT as a cost saving device. All the academic programmes of the IMT were up-graded to degree programme for studies with university qualifications while the old Diploma programme were retained for less qualified students. The merged however, lasted only three months after which the two institutions were again demerged as a result of stormy opposition from ex-students and friends of the institute.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS
Human beings are not predictable in any environment and are the most interesting and most important resources in the enterprise. Since they make decisions concerning other resources.
A major personnel activity is to train and educate cooperative members to facilitate and quicker their learning and acquisition of skills and knowledge since their present inventories of capabilities are partly a consequences of their past learning.
Unfortunately, cooperatives institutions always set high level of performance for members without appreciating the fact that performance is a function of training, educating and other favourables.
They are too quick to attribute lack of performance to inability on the part of the members and failing to realize the point that a person, tackling inability can make up through proper training, education and motivation.
Available information shows that while some cooperative institutions especially the large ones have specific training programmes, a good number of others shows partly in training and education to their members and in fact see it as a wasteful expenditure on the part of the organization.
The result is that some of these members are left to wither away because they remain unproductive. It is for this reason that it is said that untrained student is a liability to any organization, which therefore emphasizes the need for regular training and education of cooperative students by the Nigerian tertiary institution.
Base on the above and as a result of these for the purpose of this study, I now ask these questions.
1. Are individual training and education determined in IMT on cooperative matters?
2. How are individual pre-training needs determined in IMT?
3. Are these students needs to be satisfied to yield desired result?

1.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
First and foremost, the findings and recommendation to be made from this study can be of much help to students of cooperative study and Business Administration in general and in other allied fields who may wish to investigate the subject of training and education in any other organization.
This study will in no small measure by very useful to the institute since it will help it appreciate more, the need for proper training of its staff so that the learning and teaching process will be made easier for both the students and the staff, productivity in all the department of the institution will definitely increase.
Moreover, this research work affords an opportunity to undertake a research work for the first time on in-depth study in a field of study of interest.

1.4 SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
Since the research is using the survey approach in this study, it then means that he is going to make great use of the questionnaire so as to cover a wider range of about 85% to 95% of the members of the cooperative institution.
This research centers on the institution while not much use is to be made on the part of training programme carried out by cooperative institutions in the state.
It is important to note at this juncture that a number of problems encountered in the course of this research, among which are:-
a) Finance:- Due to high rate of cost of material, transportation and inflation rate in the country to day, the research had encountered lots of financial difficulties in the writing and in production of this work.
b) Time:- Another major problem which was faced in doing this work was lack of time. Due to the rush in the academic calendar, I had very little time to expand my research method and approach. The periods of normal lecture and other assignments were shared to make this project work a successful one and meet-up to this point.
I missed lectures and other activities in order to meet up and kept appointments in connection with this research.

1.5 DEFINITION OF TERMS
CEM – Co-operative Economics and Management
IMT – Institute of Management and Technology
NND – Nigerian National Diploma.