EMPOWERING THE YOUTHS FOR SELF RELIANCE: A PANACEA TO UNEMPLOYMENT IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The problem of unemployment among youths is no longer news in recent times. This has taken a different dimension in the 21st century with good number of youths roaming the street in search of job. It is well acknowledged that in today’s labour market, the numbers of youths that are looking for job are more than the available jobs. This therefore leads to scrambling, survival of the fittest and scarcity of job. Against this background, this paper is going to examine how youth empowerment for self reliance is a remedy for the continuous rise in unemployment and the writers will make use of secondary data in this work. The paper reveals that in order to reduce the number of youths that are unemployed, their empowerment is sine qua non because it is practically impossible for the government to provide enough job opportunities for all the youths. The paper also reveals that empowerment of the youths will help in the reduction of crime and in the promotion of the nation’s GDP, hence this should form part of government’s agenda. The paper concludes that when the youths are empowered, it will make them to be independent and engaging, thereby reducing the rate of kidnapping, theft, killing and all sorts of criminalities that are prevalent in the society today. It therefore recommends that the government should make it part of their agenda to always empower a certain number of youths yearly which will help in the reduction of the burden of more job expectations from her. It also recommends that the church and other nongovernmental organizations should make their contributions in reducing the rate of unemployment.