Unemployment in Nigeria: Leveraging the Opportunities Agriculture Offers

Abstract

Agriculture is an important sector in the economy of Nigerian. It is a source of employment for a significant number of the population and has been a stimulant in our economic development continuum. Because of these, public policies from independence have focused on it with the aim of promoting food security, provision of agricultural raw materials to the industrial sector, reducing poverty through employment, providing income earning opportunities and foreign exchange. Agro-enterprise is gradually assuming new dimension and scope in many economies and designed to absorb idle hands. Agro-enterprise is an option to adopt to make agriculture appealing in the present contemporary realities and absorb the teeming unemployed hands. The study was specifically a position paper that focussed on agribusiness as a tool to boosting job creation, increases in productivity and the income bases of both farmers and subsidiary business concerns that will develop from opportunities that agriculture offers because a reasonable number of Nigeria’s population are in agriculture and the development of agribusiness will go a long way in reducing unemployment that is visible in the economy, provide food security and grow the economy. However, various constraints such as access to credit and infrastructure among others must be addressed through good policies.