Media preference for an effective dissemination of poverty alleviation programmes in nigeria’s semi-urban setting: iwo town in perspective

Poverty is one of the major problems facing many African countries today. The struggle against the menace has subsequently become a major political slogan for politicians and successive governments of the continent. Nigeria, just like most African nations has for the past few decades introduced several programmes aimed at solving the problem of abject poverty which is said to be affecting over 70% of the country’s population believed to be living below poverty level. This paper examines the media for effective dissemination of information on poverty alleviation programmes of the government of the present democratic dispensation in semi-urban setting by studying the situation in Iwo town in Osun State, Nigeria. Survey method was adopted for this study using stratified sampling technique with questionnaire as the instrument for data collection. A total of 500 respondents formed the population of the study. It was discovered that an overwhelming majority of the sampled population (77.8%) were aware of the poverty alleviation programmes of the Federal Government with the Radio (16.3%) being the single most effective media. A combination of non- conventional media, electronic and print media were preferred by 23.9% of the respondents which constitutes a marginal majority while over 22.9% of the respondents preferred the combination of both electronic and print media. Preference for print media was however the lowest with just 0.6% respondents. It was therefore recommended that radio programmes of different formats be designed for the purpose of reaching the semi-urban dwellers. Infrastructure facility such as power supply should also be strengthened to further broaden the populace’s access to information.