The Effect of Youth Unemployment on Quality Education in Nigeria. A Critical View of Ikere Local Government Area of Ekiti State

Abstract

Unemployment has remained a contentious cog in the development of Nigeria as a nation. With the increasing turnout of graduates yearly from Tertiary Institutions, many graduates have remained unemployed and underemployed for a long period. This, no doubt, does not only affect national development but also continue to militate against the quality of education in Nigeria. This study is carried out to examine the effects of unemployment on the quality of education in Nigeria. It investigates the impact of unemployment on the attitude, perception and disposition of students towards education; how this attitude and perception affect the productivity of students and its overall impact on the quality of education. A self-structured questionnaire was used to elicit information from 105 respondents randomly selected from corps members, graduates, undergraduates, primary school teachers, secondary school teachers and college of Education lecturers from Ikere Local Government Area of Ekiti state. The study revealed that unemployment has discouraged majority of the students to be serious with academic activities which hinders their creative imagination and enhances criminal activities in schools. Most students are crazy to have certificates they cannot defend. This study, therefore, recommends the need to reposition education towards developing the creative skills of students and re-orientation of students on the essence of education as a means of widening their horizon so that they can make use of opportunities around rather than expecting automatic ticket to white collar jobs which are not readily available.

KEYWORDS: Youths, Unemployment, Quality Education, National Development

Introduction

One of the problems that have continued to hamper the development of Nigeria as a nation is unemployment. The numbers of unemployed able bodies that is capable and willing to work who are unable to find suitable and gainful job are swelling daily. This significantly affects the living standard of many Nigerians and contributes to poverty in the nation with direct consequence on national development (Bankole, 2006). According to the Former Minister of Finance; Nenadi E. Usman in his opening remark in NES conference in 2006, unemployment is one of the manifestations of a failed or failing economy because its ripple effects, both at the macro and micro levels are easily evidence and this touches every facet of the society.

In Nigeria, Bankole (2006) observed that there are underemployment cases in which people receive income that are inadequate to support their basic needs in terms of food, clothing and shelter. There are also cases of disguised unemployment where people take up jobs that are below their educational attainment and experience. The worst case of all is that of people seeking for job opportunities but who could not find any either in the public or private sector. Bankole (2006) added that some people are willing and ready to set up enterprises themselves and engage in one type of economic activities or the other but are constrained by the prevailing poor macroeconomic environment.

A report from the National Bureau of Statistics (2018) shows that a number of unemployed Nigerians rose by 3.3 million to 20.9 million in the third quarter of 2018; Economically active or working age population (15-55 years of age) increased from 111.1 million in 2017 to 115.5 million in 2018 and the number of persons in the labour force increased from 73.94 million in 2015 to 80.66 million in 2016, 85.1 million in 2017 and 90.5 million in 2018. As of 2018, the calculated unemployment rate was 23.1 percent, the underemployment rate was 20.1 percent and the combined unemployment and underemployment rate was 43.3 percent. These shows a rise in the rate of unemployment and little prove of improvement in reducing it.

Review of Literature

The National Manpower Board and Federal Bureau of Statistics show that Nigeria has a youth population of 80million, representing 60 percent of the total population of the country. Of that number, 64 million are unemployed while 1.6 million are underemployed. (Daku, 2015). With this statistics, it can be concluded that graduates from tertiary institutions constitute the vast majority of those unemployed in Nigeria. The rate of youth unemployment is on the increase in Nigeria, causing fraustration, dependency and dejection.

With the increasing turnout of graduates yearly from tertiary institutions, many gradates still remain unemployed for a long time after graduation. Ayodele, Obor and Okafor (2015) assert that unemployment and underemployment keep increasing even after service year which has continued to serve as an impediment to the progress of the nation. In the opinion of Adewale (2015), if unemployment and underemployment is not addressed on time, it will continue to have tremendous impact on the society.

Adewale (2015) observes that the inability to find decent work enhances a sense of vulnerability and inadequacies among the youths which lead to other social vices and conflicts. Many graduates still live with their parents even long after graduation and depend heavily on their friends and parents in almost all aspects. The inability to carter for themselves make many female youths rush into marriage and the males frightened to take up responsibility of marriage.

With the increase in the rate of youth unemployment, the quality of education is gradually becoming more watery. Education, which offers the best strategy to break the cycle of poverty, misery and violence (Daniels, 2007) has been hampered that students take academic activities less seriously. Noteworthy is the fact that many people have the perception that education is a passport to gainful employment. The uncertainty recorded nowadays has bewildered the quality of education. Both the graduates and the students who are still in the system and the entire stakeholders in the system have not shown any significant improvement in facing this challenge in Nigeria.

There are many people who would argue that many employment opportunities are still out there which remain untapped by the graduates. The debate that arises is whether these graduates are not employed because there are no job vacancies or because they are unemployable. As many researchers (Pia, 2004, Ayodele et al, 2015, Daku, 2015) assert, the private sector, which should provide more of the jobs opportunities do complain about the proficiency of graduates and cannot employ people who are not able to rise up to the challenges of their jobs

According to Pia (2004), the ultimate aim of education is to discipline the mind by developing in learners the capacity for observation, for logical thinking, for functioning in groups, for self-expression and for loving the act of learning. The skills that schools seek to develop through the curriculum exposes learners to the different fields of learning. The national aims and objectives of Education include: inculcation of national consciousness and unity; inculcation of the right type of values and attitudes for the survival of the individual and the Nigerian society; training of the mind in understanding of the world around, and acquisition of appropriate skills, abilities and competences both mental and physical as equipment for the individual to live in and contribute to the development of his society. This shows that education is a process of integrating an individual into the society so that he can be useful for himself and his society. Hence, education is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

On the contrary, the erroneous mentality that has been vested in the mind ofpeople over the years is that education is solely a passport to gainful employment. Vast majority of students believe that education should provide a white collar job after graduation. Seven out of every ten students want a white collar job. They desire to work in government offices and other multimillion companies. The irony of the situation is that the vacancies for such jobs are limited. As a result, the attitude and perception of students towards education is negatively affected.

This becomes obvious in their lackadaisical attitude towards academic activities. Students become academically unserious and this pervades all educational institutions ranging from the primary and secondary schools to the tertiary level. Students engage in all forms of examination malpractices such as impersonation, exchanging sex for scores, marks buying, lobbying for good grades and certificate forgery. These are all indices of the erroneous notion of students towards certificate. Students who are still in school are not encouraged to embark on learning activities because of the fact that their graduate brothers and sisters at home still remain unemployed long after graduating from schools. Hence, students lose touch with education and see education merely as an avenue of gaining freedom from parents, meeting new friends and getting certificates.

Another factor is the practice of theory based education. There is no conducive atmosphere and materials for real practical experience are not available. Where they are available, they are always very insufficient. Science students do not know what a laboratory looks like and many language students are only taught in class without modern language laboratory. Also, emphasis on certificate and written examination as the only means to attest intellectual capacity reduce the actual intelligence, productivity and impaired the employability of graduates. All these affect the disposition of students towards education thereby hindering a qualitative output from education system. Hence, it becomes expedient to examine the influence of recurring unemployment on the quality of education in Nigeria. In view of this, this study investigates the effects of unemployment on the attitude, perception and disposition of students towards education, how these attitude and perception affect the productivity of students and the overall effect on the quality of education and national development.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to find out the effects of youths unemployment on disposition of students and quality education in Nigeria with particular reference to Ikere local government area of Ekiti state.

Research Questions

The study was guided by the following questions:

i. What are the effects of unemployment on national development?
ii. How does unemployment affect the attitude, perception and disposition of students towards education?
iii. To what extend does this influence the productivity of students?
iv. What are the roles of education in curbing unemployment in Nigeria?

Method

This study was conducted in Ikere Local Government Area of Ekiti State. The local government is one of the largest local governments in Ekiti state comprising various people of different race, tribe, religion, language and culture with high flow of commercial activities. A renowned College of Education which carries out degree programme in affiliate with University of Nigeria, Nsukka as well as several primary and secondary schools are located in the local government. Graduates, Undergraduates, Corps members, teachers at primary, secondary and tertiary institutions located within the local government constitute the population of the study. Using convenience and purposive sampling technique, 105 respondents were sampled for the study. This approach was basically adopted for easy access of the sampled respondents. The respondents consisted of twenty-five (25) corps members, twenty-five (25) graduates and twenty-five (25) undergraduates comprising the NCE and Degree students, ten (10) primary school teachers, ten (10) secondary school teachers and ten (10) lecturers made up the 105 respondents.

This study employed mixed method of qualitative and quantitative data to collect information from respondents. Twenty (20) self-structured questionnaire was used to elicit information on the effect of unemployment, perceptions about education and how these perception affect students’ productivity and quality of education in Nigeria. In addition, in depth interviews were equally conducted with some respondents who possessed some unique information on the subjects of study as a way of complementing the survey. All qualitative data were conducted with the aids of tape recorder and field note. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics via mean scores while the qualitative data were processed through content analyses with occasional verbatim quotations where appropriate.

Result and discussion

After the collection and collation of data, the results and discussion of findings are presented to reflect the specific objectives of the study. The questionnaire used in collecting data and responses of students was developed on a 4-point Likert scale. Mean score above 2.5 was accepted and those below were rejected.

Question 1: What are the effects of unemployment on the youths and national development?

Table One: Mean score of Respondents on the effects of unemployment on the youths and national development

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Table 1.

Table 1 above reveals the effects of unemployment on the youths and national development. A large fraction of the respondents agreed that unemployment had made youths desperate to do anything that attract money (3.50), lose trust in Government (3.36) and enhances sense of vulnerability and inadequacy among youths (3.30) which invariably increase social vices, ills, and conflict (3.45). Consequently, all these slow down the rate of national development (3.25). A male corps respondent corroborated this when he said:

Unemployment in Nigeria reduces quality work force. This is because many intelligent minds that have already undergone tertiary education are unable to contribute their own quota to the development of the nation. This arouses a feeling of fraustration so much so that the youths have become dubious and desperate to do anything just to earn a living. That’s is why you hear about cases of someone eating someone else’s excrete with bread on the refuse dump and the ladies being used for money rituals because of their overzealousness for money(Corps Member/Male/College Of Education, Ikere-Ekiti/2019)

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