A REVIEW OF TRADITIONAL AUTHORITY AND ITS IMPACT ON THE ACCEPTANCE OF AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION IN WESTERN NIGERIA
Keywords:
traditional authority, impact, agricultural innovation, Western Nigeria, kingdom, community, familyAbstract
The paper examines the nature of traditional authority in a typical African setting and dealt with it at three levels of articulation the kingdom, the community and the family. It define the traditional authority as the system of uncodified rules, customs, belief and practices which a people have and subscribe to for regulating the pattern of social behaviour among individual members of the society.
The analysis came out with the conclusion that the most important impact of agricultural innovations could be found at the community and the family levels. At both levels, traditional authority could be used to discourage or encourage the adoption of agricultural innovations by farmers. Several concrete examples from empirical research findings and field observation by the author were used to demonstrate this phenomenon.
