PERCEPTION OF RURAL DWELLERS ON ACCESSIBILITY TO INFRASTRUCTURE IN NIGER STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study assesses rural dwellers’ satisfaction with accessibility to some selected infrastructure, namely health, education and water, in rural settlements of Niger state of Nigeria. To achieve this aim, a multi-stage sampling technique was employed to systematically select 22 rural settlements in 22 local government areas. In all, a total of 1,729 rural dwellers were selected. The parameters used to assess the accessibility of rural dwellers to the selected infrastructure namely health, education and water in this study were distance travelled to enjoy the services, the mode of transportation used to reach the facilities and respondents’ satisfaction rating on the locations of the facilities. The study revealed that 1,437 (80.2%) respondents travelled less than ½ km to enjoy water facilities, while 1,115 (62.2%) travelled the same distance to access educational facilities. Only 937 (52.3%) respondents admitted travelling a distance of less than ½ km to get to the locations of health facilities. The inference that can be drawn from the above observation is that, comparatively, more respondents were satisfied with the distance travelled to enjoy water facilities compared to health and educational facilities, respectively. The study concludes that accessibility to facilities varies among the selected rural settlements, but water supply is relatively more accessible to respondents in their neighbourhood than health and education facilities. The study recommends that the local government council should be sufficiently made autonomous in execution of assigned functions including provision and maintenance of infrastructure in the rural settlements of the state.