Perception of Students on Agricultural Career: Focus on Secondary School Students in Minna Metropolis, Niger State, Nigeria.

Abstract

The study assessed students' perception on agricultural profession, using secondary school students of Minna metropolis as the respondents. To achieve the study objectives, a total of 114 respondents were randomly selected from six schools. Structured questionnaire was used for data collection and the data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Likert scale and chi-square test. Result of the study indicates that 53.51% of the respondents were male while 46.49% were female; 37.72% were members of agricultural societies in their schools. Agricultural career was among the least preferred profession as indicated by only 4.39% of the respondents. Low preference for agriculture was attributed to parent's influence and negative opinion of society toward agriculture. !n addition, most of the respondents did not have adequate knowledge on agricultural career prospect. With respect to the respondents’ attitude towards career in agriculture, 9.65% showed favourable attitude, 76.31% showed unfavourable attitude^whilel4,04% were neutral. The chi-square result further revealed that parent's influence had significant relationship with respondents' career choice ( X2 =0.0001, P<0.05). Based on the findings, it was suggested that rigorous awareness campaigns should be undertaken on the need for parents to allow their children to make career choice according to their personal interest.