Vocational and technical education training: Panacea to youth unemployment and poverty alleviation in Nigeria.

Abstract

The youth unemployment in Nigeria needs an urgent attention of educational stake holders if the future of Nigeria youths is of paramount importance to the nation. The purpose of this study is to use Vocational and Technical Education as a way forward to eradicate youth unemployment in Nigeria. While the objectives were to determine the principal factors responsible for youths unemployment and how Vocational and Technical Education can be used to solve the problem. Two research questions were formulated to guide the study while two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significant. The population of the study was four hundred and eighty five who are youth and adult were captured from North central Nigeria. Two experts from the department of Industrial and Technology Education, Federal University of Technology Minna, Nigeria, validated the instrument. The study adopted a descriptive survey design, while instrument used was a 30 items questionnaire to obtain data from the respondents. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyse the data collected. Finding of the study shows that attention should be given to youth’s unemployment in Nigeria so as to reduce the level of unemployment if not totally eliminated. This will prevent youth from becoming a menace to the society. To achieve this, Nigeria youths needs to learn skills in vocational and technical education for self-reliance. Based on these findings, it was recommended that all three tiers of Nigeria government that is, federal, states and local government needs to equip vocational and technical colleges throughout the country. Emphasis needed to be given to recruitment of quality human resources to teach in these colleges so as to impact the needful knowledge and skills to Nigeria youths.