ALTERNATIVE AGRICULTURAL FINANCING AND RURAL ECONOMIC DIVERSIFICATION IN NIGERIA: DOES ACCESS TO CREDITS CHALLENGES MATTERS?.

Isaac M. Ikpor, B.C Eneje and H.E Nwosu

Department of Accountancy and Business Administration

Federal University, Ndufu-Alike Ikwo.

Email: isaacikpor@rocketmail.com

ABSTRACT

Purpose:-The primary aim of this study is to investigate the effect of alternative agricultural financing strategies on rural economic diversification in Nigeria with a view to ascertaining whether or not access to credit challenges matters among farmers in Nigeria.

Design/methodology/approach:-We identified some alternative agricultural financing strategies currently employed by government and regressed it against annualized aggregate data of rural economic diversification in Nigeria extracted from the database of United Nation Conference on Trade And Development(UNCTAD) for the period 1990-2016 using fixed effect regression model approach.

Findings:-.The study finds that the link between alternative agricultural financing and rural economic diversification in Nigeria appears non-monotonic; and that the consistency of empirical results and development theory across various agricultural regimes in Nigeria depend much more on the extent of implementation rather than policy making.

Research Limitations/Implications:-Among various alternative agricultural financing strategies available in Africa, this study employs only nine alternative financing strategies available to the smallholder farmers in Nigeria. This might make the result of the study not to be generalizable bearing in mind the country specific effects of the variables employed.