Impact of Entrepreneurship Skill Acquisition on Youth and Graduate Unemployment in Owo Local Government Area, Ondo State, Nigeria

Abstract

Skill acquisition is the art of knowledge to do something in order to earn a living and or to stay alive. The concern for better livelihood has always been the concern of past and present government of Nigeria, this was why several youth empowerment programmes like sure-p and N-power was initiated by the Government of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and Muhammodu Buhari to occupy the youth in active and productive activities that will better their lives and enable them contribute importantly to the Country economy. However, these schemes are yet to achieve the purposes for which it was established for, the better or rather sure bet to achieving these set goals was the integration of entrepreneurship skill acquisition programmes to help eliminate poverty and improve standard of living for rural dwellers in the Country. Hence, this study was carried out to examine entrepreneurship skills acquisition and youth unemployment of selected communities in Owo local government area in Ondo state, Nigeria. a total of 110 samples size was adopted, while the Chi-square (x2) contained in the statistical package for social sciences version 26 (SPSS) was used to the test the formulated hypotheses for the study, the findings from the study discovered Entrepreneurial skill acquisition has been considered very important in this research as a necessary antidote to the evidence problem of youth and graduate unemployment in Owo local government of Ondo state and the study is of the opinion that the introduction of entrepreneurial skill acquisition programmes will help the youth more especially in job and employment generation, create further opportunities for the young people to develop their enterprising skills and make them to be job creators and not job seekers. Therefore, the study recommended the government should as a matter of its civic responsibility, provide soft loans, fertilizer subsidy and mechanized materials and machineries to farmers in the rural area, through the bank of industry to enable them improve from their traditional ways of farming into a more mechanized way.