Farmers’ participation in savings and credit cooperative societies: Mean per capita annual farm income and poverty reduction in Niger State, Nigeria Abel Gomina 1 * and Faiva Ayuba Ngari 2 1 Department of Agricultural Economics, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. 2 Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, Modibo Adama University of Technology, Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria. Accepted 30 June, 2015 ABSTRACT The study assessed Farmers’ Participation in Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies: Mean per capita annual farm income and Poverty Reduction in Niger State, Nigeria. Combinations of purposive and random sampling techniques were used to select 85 and 72 beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of saving and credit cooperative societies (SACCOS). Data were obtained through a well structured questionnaire. Foster-Greer- Thorbecke (FGT) poverty measures and multiple regression models were employed for data analysis. The result indicates that out of eight (8) variables included in the regression, only age had a negative coefficient and statistically not significant. Gender, secondary occupation, household size, educational level, farm income, non-farm income, interest rate charged had positively influenced farmers’ participation in Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies in the study area. Household size, farm income, non-farm income, interest rate charged and educational level are statistically significant at 1 and 10% levels of significance respectively. The study further revealed that about 33 and 67% of the beneficiaries and about 8 and 18% of the non-beneficiaries fall under the non-poor category before and after obtaining credit respectively. Poverty is marginally severe among the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries but is more marginally severe among the non-beneficiaries. The study recommends that Non-governmental Organisation and local government council in the areas should intensify their efforts to boost the income diversification practices of farmers through provision of infrastructure especially feeder roads. This could enhance the level of farm and non- farm activities that could generate more income for the household and thereby help to combat poverty among the respondents. Keywords: Savings, random sampling techniques, gender, educational level, infrastructure. *Corresponding author. E-mail: ablegoms@yahoo.com. INTRODUCTION In Nigeria, several efforts have been made to create jobs for the teaming able bodied people who are available for work but who could not find jobs (Goodluck, 2011). One key source of unemployment in Nigeria is dearth of capital required to combine with other factors of production, which are land, labour and entrepreneurship (Nieman et al., 2003). Although growth is critical for poverty reduction, focus on growth alone is not enough (Almas, 2013). Micro-lending has been considered as the latest panacea for poverty alleviation (Magbagbeola et al., 2010). There has been a growth in the recognition of the importance of empowering all people in their access to all the factors of production including credit (Ahmad et al., 2004). Cooperative societies all over the globe have been seen as one of the ways of reaching out to the un-banked and the neglected in the society and not a few have come to see it as an alternative to the regular banking since it Net Journal of Agricultural Science Vol. 3(3), pp. 68-73, July 2015 ISSN: 2315-9766 Full Length Research Paper