Effect of Parental Unemployment on Academic Performance of Secondary School Students in Nigeria (Published)
This paper examines the effect of parental unemployment on academic performance of secondary school students. Thus, the efficacy of parental unemployment is perilous social problem which contributed to the inability of many parents to caring for their children education. However, the challenges of unemployed parents contributed to the high rate of step—down many students in secondary education. Consequently, there some factors which contributes to unemployed parents in country such as shortage of industries, inexperience of people, unskilled labour and unavailable of firms. Moreover, thousands of embody men and women are unemployed in Nigeria. However they are seeking for employment opportunities, but the job is not available for them that was the reason many parents are jobless and they cannot provide their childern education pre-requisite, while some parents are not ready to work that is reason they are jobless and find it cumbersome to care for their children education. Presently, thousands of secondary school students involved various bad activities such prostitution, Yahoo, kidnapping, stealing, and other relevant offences in our country, because of inability of their parents to send them to secondary education . Yet, unemployment cause high rate of poverty which affected many patents in thirty- six states of federation includes Abuja the federal capital of Nigeria. However, the rate of drop out increasing daily basis because their parents could not perform their responsibility as parenting who have devoted to caring for their children education. Moreover, the population of unemployed parents is too high in Nigeria .
Keywords: Academic, Education, Parenting, Performance, Poverty, School, Secondary, Unemployed, Unemployment, parent
Assessment of the Contribution of N-Power Programme to Youth Empowerment in Cross River State, Nigeria (Published)
The purpose of the study was to assess the contribution of N-Power programme to youth empowerment in Cross River State, Nigeria. Specifically, the objectives of the study were; to determine the contribution of N-Power programme to youth empowerment in Cross River, to identify challenges facing the programme in ensuring empowerment of youth in the study area and to suggest ways of improving the N-Power programme for more effective youth empowerment in Nigeria. The study adopted cross sectional survey design while cluster random sampling was used to select beneficiaries. Questionnaires were used to collect data as Key Informant Interview was also used to compliment Questionnaire. Furthermore, the study used percentages for analysis of data. The study discovered that the beneficiaries of N-Power programme were mostly composed of N-Teach strand of the programme, followed by N-Health strand, N-Agro and Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS) strands respectively. The study also found that N-Power contributed to empowerment of youth through poverty reduction, proficiency skills in ICT, financial empowerment, on the job experience and investment in small scale businesses. However, there were challenges faced by the programmme in empowerment of youth which included delay in payment of allowance, unpaid allowances, distance to working places and teacher training for most of N-Teach beneficiaries. The study therefore recommended for prompt and timely payment of the stipends to beneficiaries of the programme by Federal government, timely sorting of problems of unpaid allowances, posting nearest to place of residence and teacher education for N-Teach categories.
Keywords: Empowerment, N-Power, Poverty, Unemployment, social investment programme
YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT AND POVERTY IN NIGERIA (Published)
Unemployment and poverty are both reflective and precipitants of plethora of contemporary societal challenges such as leadership, security, governance, etc. that are inimical to human social – existence (for engendering adequate human capacity building and material utilisation) globally. For instance, the National Bureau of Statistics in Nigeria revealed the alarming rate of youth unemployment which is as much as 50%. Considering the fact that, the current population growth rate is put at 2.8 per annum in Nigeria which accompanies an already national population of over 167 million people. Therefore, the extent to which these challenges possess to the nation is remarkably worrisome in recent times, is the escalating and worrisome rate of youth unemployment which has assumed an alarming crescendo. It is against this backdrop, the paper sees to its justification the need to see to its imperativeness with a view of given cogent attention for their needs. Hence, this paper examines “the intimate connection between unemployment and poverty, and how these two phenomena affect the youth in Nigeria”. In order to fulfill the objectives of this paper, relevant literature were consulted and established database explored for holistic and comparative study, to illustrate the mitigation and enabling factors for the realization of the objectives of youth employment and poverty alleviation if not total eradication in the society – Nigeria. With the aid of content analyses of the materials explored: this paper contend that fundamentally, there is a close nexus between poverty and unemployment with direct bearings on the critical segment of the society, particularly the youth. Also, inspite of the myriad policies and programmes initiated by successive Nigerian government such as National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), Subsidy Re-Investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P), National Directorate of Employment (NDE), National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Schemes in Nigeria, as lofty and laudable as they seem, their inability to affect the real target (youth), reflects the lacuna between policy formulation and implementation. The thrust of this paper therefore is its strong proposition to government at all levels to demonstrate a commitment towards responsive governance, with focus on jobs creation and eradication of poverty. In addition, appropriate authorities should endeavor to sensitize the citizens on the need to embrace birth control measures for the purpose of engendering sustainable development.
Keywords: Population and Development, Poverty, Unemployment, Youth