Introduction
Cooperation can be dated back to man existence, when God created Adam and later
Eve to be assisting him in the garden of Aden. In the times past our fore fathers
engaged in different form of cooperation such as Ajo (contribution), owe and Aro
(Self Help Groups) to support themselves in their respective farms, these forms of
cooperation’s metamorphosed to what we know as modern day cooperatives.
It will interest you to know that the first successful cooperative organization formed
is a workers’ cooperative. It is called the Rochidale Equitable pioneers. The Equitable
pioneers are group of factory workers in Rochidale who realized that their take home
is not sufficient for them and then pooled their resources together and established a
cooperative retail shop to take care of the social economic needs of their members.
The first cooperative society in Nigeria was formed by late chief Obafemi Awolowo at
Gbedun Village near Akaran in Ibadan, the present Ona Ara Local Government of Oyo
State. Since then, cooperative has gone through several modifications the result of
which led to the formation of different types and forms of cooperatives.
The two major types of Cooperatives are:
1. Orthodox Cooperative Societies. i.e Community based
2. Departmental Cooperative Societies i.e Industrial based
The cooperative we a proposing will be more of community base i.e SOJ community
THE COOPERATIVE BUSINESS MODEL
Cooperative organization has three tiers namely primary, secondary and tertiary
cooperatives.
The primary cooperative is an association of at least ten individuals who are
bonded together by a NEXUS in this case (SOJ platform) and pool their
resources together to enhance the social economic affairs of the members.
The secondary cooperative organization are otherwise known as credit union,
it is the association of three or more registered primary cooperative society
who look after the welfare of the members’ society and by extension the
individual members of the registered societies.
While the tertiary cooperative organizations are the regulatory body either at
the state or national level.
In the context of this proposal we will only need the primary and secondary
cooperative.
It is our recommendation that each zonal chapter establishes a primary cooperative
society in their respect state because of proximity, zones will come together to form
and register a credit union at the state level while the national body will be in charge
of monitoring and overseeing the overall affairs of the cooperatives.
MODUS OPERANDI
We are recommending the credit union because of the effectiveness to drive modern
cooperative model that will befit an association like SOJ.
The credit union will create offices throughout the participating state out of where
the cooperative activities will be carried out through the zonal coordinators.
The credit union will be operating what we called Front Office Service Activities
(FOSA) where members can work into the credit union office and carry out over the
counter transactions such as deposit, withdrawal applying for loans and payment of
loans real time online services with state of the art technology.
Benefits of this model
Strength in group than individual
It encourages savings culture
Cooperative incomes are not taxable
Members are owners
Access to financial grant
Access to single digit loans for investment through BOI, DBN and BOA
Access to mortgage loans through FMBN
Flexible access to fund via debit/credit ATM card
Non interest loans
Employment opportunities for members
Diverse Investment opportunities
Take off point
We will recommend that we do zone by zone implementation using the zones in
Abuja as pilot to understudy the model and also address the anticipated teething
challenges before going full throttle to other zones and state.
Farayola Rasheed Adetunji
adetunjif@[Link]
08033656989