Bus 213 is a code given to a course titled Co-operative
Development. The course is being offered the whole students in the
school of business studies, but housed in the Department of Co-operative
Economics and Management (CEM). It was offered during the first
semester of my NDII. The course was provided with the aim to enrich the
students involved, with the knowledge of the growth and development of
modern co-operative in the world. The course was in mimeography written
by Mr. C.C Bob Igwe, MBA NINIM, a lecturer in the co-operative
Economics Department in Institute of Management and Technology, (IMT)
Enugu.
As the Bus 213 is Co-operative Development indeed, then what is the meaning of this key words, "Co-operative and Development?"
Co-operative mean people working together to achieve a common
objective (STAN .O. UCHENDU (1998:2). It is therefore a general term
which covers a wide range of activities in which two or more people work
together either formally or informally, temporarily or ad hoc or on a
permanent basis to achieve a given legal or illegal, socially accepted
or unaccepted goal(s).
The concept of co-operation as economic and social organ started
first among people whose means of livelihood were frustrated by the
introduction of machine and factory system. They were forced by poverty
to submit to long hours of work, harsh discipline and squalor of
industrial settlement (Industrial Revolution Period). The basic idea
of co-operation is that there is a group action to achieve common goal.
Development on the other hand could be referred to as the act or
means of gradual advancement or progression of co-operation from crude
or cradle or from a particular speculation to other part of the world.
From one stage of maturity to another.
Development of co-operation was not a child of circumstance but a
child of necessity as it came on the stage when it was mostly needed to
salvage the poor masses from the cruelty of the middlemen and
exploitative employers