Cowpea is of vital importance to the livelihood of millions of people in West and Central Africa. Despite its potential, cowpea production faces numerous biotic and abiotic constraints. Over the past years, a number of varieties have been developed combining diverse plant type, different maturity period, and resistance to several diseases, insect pests, and parasitic weeds. However, their adoption in north-east Nigeria is low. As a result, a participatory research and extension approach was used to encourage farmers to test several cowpea varieties under their conditions to facilitate their adoption. Integral to the research were a researcher managed mother and 244 farmer managed daughter trials. In the mother trial, application of insecticides once each at flowering and podding stages gave a yield advantage of 126% over no spray. Five improved cultivars gave superior yields at all spraying regimes. The daughter trials provided opportunity for farmer testing, monitoring, and evaluation with most farmers indicating higher productivity with improved varieties when sprayed twice with insecticides. End of season evaluations however, showed that farmers still ranked the local cultivars higher than the improved varieties because of larger seed size and brown color. Breeders should therefore consider these traits during the development of cowpea varieties.