Entrepreneurship Education and Youth Empowerment in Nigeria
Entrepreneurship Education and Youth Empowerment in Nigeria
Dairo, Ayodeji Olusegun
Department of Entrepreneurship
College of Management Sciences
Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Ikeji Arakeji, Osun State
E-mail: olusegun.ayodeji@yahoo.com
&
Alo, Ebenezer Adebisi (PhD)
Department of Business Administration
College of Management Sciences
Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Ikeji Arakeji, Osun State
ABSTRACT
The paper focused on the imperatives of formal and non-formal education and the need to incorporate skill acquisition in every field of endeavor in order to empower the youths in Nigeria. In recent years, youth restiveness has been a thing of concern and it has posed a lot of threats to the peace and security that used to exist before in the country. Previous studies have been able to highlight entrepreneurship education and skill acquisition has a veritable tool in tackling unemployment and youth restiveness but it is worthy of note that purposeful and functional entrepreneurship which can identify related problems peculiar to different environments where people live is the only sustainable way out to empowering the youths. A cross sectional survey of youth empowerment programmes across the country revealed that the distribution of motorcycles and tricycles by politicians is not a way out of unemployment as it will only provide temporary succor because such cannot last for a lifetime. Therefore, the youth empowerment concept should be able to develop youths in specialized professions so that they can improve on their talents and set up businesses and probably become consultants in their professions. Recommendations were further made on how entrepreneurship education can sustain the unemployed youths
Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Empowerment, Education
