Information Needs and Access of Members of Vigilante in Adamawa State, North-east Nigeria

ABSTRACT 

The  study  investigated  the  Information  needs  and  access  of  Members  of  Vigilante  in Adamawa state, North-eastern Nigeria, one of the three states bedeviled by the Boko Haram insurgency.  Quantitative  research  methodology  and  Cross-sectional  survey  design  was applied for the study. The population of the study comprised of One Thousand Four Hundred Members (1400) drawn from Nineteen (19) local governments areas in the state. Krejcie and Morgan Table (1970) was used to draw (302) members as sample  of the population, while Walpole’s (1982) formula for proportions was used in arriving at a sample for each stratum (i.e. each local government area). In collecting data, a total of Three Hundred and Two (302) copies  of  questionnaires  were  administered,  and  Two  Hundred  and  Forty  240  copies (79.47%) were returned and found useful. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics. The outcome of the study revealed that the information needs of members were daily  mainly  work  related  and  from  informal  sources,  as  there  were  no  public libraries/information centers in 17 local governments’ areas of the state. The outcome of the research  also  revealed  barriers  to  information  access  to  include  general  lack  of  formal information infrastructure such as libraries/information centers, poor and unreliable informal information sources, as well as lack of training on information literacy skills for members of Vigilante. It is recommended that there is a need for those involved in vigilante information delivery  to  continuously  examine  and  identify  evolving  information  needs  of  members  of vigilante  in  order  to  meet  such  needs.  Government  should  resuscitate  the  dying  public libraries in all the local government areas of Adamawa state to provide information services. Libraries should organize training on information literacy and other information use skills for members of vigilante, because if this is done, it will enhance and improve information access across communities in Adamawa state. Finally, information resources be repackaged in order to take care of challenges of proximity to sources of information, language barrier and other challenges faced by members of vigilante.  Keywords: Information needs, Information access, Information Sources, Vigilante