UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE NIGERIA ECONOMY: A CASE STUDY OF OVIA SOUTH WEST LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF EDO STATE

UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE NIGERIA ECONOMY: A CASE STUDY OF OVIA SOUTH WEST LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF EDO STATE

ABSTRACT

This research was conducted to investigate unemployment and the Nigeria economy a case study of Ovia South West Local Government Area of Edo State capital. In the course of carrying out the work, the researcher looked at the type of unemployment, some of which include frictional unemployment, seasonal unemployment, cyclical unemployment and residual unemployment. The researcher also focuses her attention on reviewing related literature. More so, it was revealed that some of the causes of unemployment are too many in the Nigeria economy. Irrelevance of the course studies, the movement of people from rural areas to urban areas. However, some recommendations were made in the closing chapter among which are; Government should restructure our education system to suit the demands of the society, Government should make agriculture more attractive, Good development plan, finally, government should provide necessary infrastructure to prevent the rural-urban migration, if these are provided by the government, it will help to reduce unemployment rate to an extent.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The Nigerian economy since the attainment of political independence in 1960 has undergone fundamental structural changes resulting to structural shifts which have however not resulted in any significant sustainable economic growth and development to ensure adequate employment opportunity for her youths. Recently, available data show that the Nigerian economy grew relatively in the greater parts of the 1970s, with respect to the oil boom of the 1970s whose extreme profits resulted to wasteful expenditures in the public sector leading to dislocation of the employment factors and also distorted the revenue bases for policy planning. This among many other crises resulted in the introduction of the structural adjustment programme (SAP) in 1986 and the recent economic reforms. The core objective of the economic structural reform is a total restructuring of the Nigerian economy in the face of population explosion (Douglason et al, 2006).

However, these economic and financial structural reforms put in place did not yield significant results, hence in recent past; there has been an alarming increase in the rate of unemployment and its attendant social and economic problems. Unemployment is one of the developmental problems that face every developing economy (Patterson et al, 2006), and Nigeria is not exempted. Its impact has been felt more by the youths. Nigerian youths from all corners of the country rush to Lagos state in search of white-collar jobs, especially, the graduates. This is because of the believe that Lagos state, being the former Federal Capital State and centre of excellence has more (job) opportunities than other states, necessitating the scuttle to Lagos for greener pastures. This rush has led to the profligacy of the rate of unemployment in the state. This is not to say that unemployment is absent in the other states of the federation or even less, hence the general observations from many researchers on Nigerian unemployment such as Alanana (2003), Echebiri (2005) and Awogbenle and Iwuamadi (2010), Okafor (2011). In their research endeavors, they have brought to the fore that unemployment across the world has reached a great height and is likely to climb further. Okafor (2011) documented that in Sub-Sahara Africa, youth population was estimated at 138 million people in 2002-2003, with 28.9 million, or 21 percent of them unemployed (ILO, 2004). It has also been reported that unemployment in Africa has a geographical dimension as it is generally higher in the urban areas than in rural ones such as Lagos state and several factors have been adduced to account for higher unemployment rate in Africa, most notably low economic growth, low economic activity and low investment. These related factors contribute to low job creation and because of sustained (increased in some cases) population growth the small labour market is unable to absorb the resulting army of job seekers in Nigeria.

UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE NIGERIA ECONOMY: A CASE STUDY OF OVIA SOUTH WEST LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF EDO STATE