Feasible media mix for dissemination of forest conservation support information (FCSI) in South Western Nigeria

Abstract

The paper reports tile potentials of media mix in use for agricultural information dissemination as applied to

dissemination of information on forest conservation and sustainable land use practices in three southwestern states of

Nigeria. It covered enclaves in Sliasha and Oluwa forest reseives in Oshun and Ondo states respective&, as well as

settlements surrounding Old Oyo fictional Park h Oyo State. Z'ie media considered were traditionai and

eierironic/prinnt Primary data were sourced through adminishtion of open-ended and structured quesfionna2es and

use of focus group discussions (FGDs) and rapid rurai appraisal (RRA) terl~nique of 20% of tile settlements in and

around tilestudy sites. Datagenerated were anaiyzed usingdescriptive andinferentialstatistics Resuitshowedthat an

average of 69.0% of the inhabitants had at least a functional radio set, wide 6513, 5.6% and 1.2% had access lo

panlpiilets, newspaper/oiagazine, and television sets respective&. in /lie case of traditional media, town criers, was

most& hvoured (46%), while 60% and 311% of the inhabitants favoured tile use of foikiore, songs and

festivals/rel~io~sgatl~eringre~p~cTthievree is thereforeno common medium accessed by allrespondentsi F= 4.02

dfr = 2536 Pr < 0.02) ait11ougI1fi om inhabitants'perspecijves, traditionaland modern media messages are found to

comphlent each other (F= 23.6; dfr. = 253;Pr. c0.01). In addition, the mixmost favoured by inliabitants for sourcing

information on sustainabieland usein the study area was found to be mmmuniry/e&iousieaders, andradio (344%).

So also, the most appiopriate media mix for the dissemination offoresf conservation/sustainabie land use practices in

the study area is the Dillage/reliigiousfo~aa nd radio (458%).T hus,pubiic change institutions, rvlich were found to be

important to one-on-one infoimation dissemination, must be beefed up to meet optimal performance standard. Also,

oll~errelevantmedias hould be explored tomeet the target audience requiiementsfor accessingFCS1