A STUDY OF HOW ENTREPRENEURSHIP POLICIES PROMOTE YOUTH EMPOWERMENT BY ENHANCING EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN OBIO-AKPOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF RIVERS STATE, NIGERIA.

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ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP POLICY ON YOUTH EMPOWERMENT THROUGH EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN OBIO-AKPOR LGA OF RIVERS STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has emerged as a pivotal mechanism for stimulating economic growth, reducing unemployment, and empowering young people, particularly in developing economies like Nigeria. This study investigates the impact of entrepreneurship policy on youth empowerment through employment opportunities in Obio-Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State. The study aims to evaluate how existing entrepreneurship policies, programs, and government interventions contribute to the creation of sustainable employment and the enhancement of youths’ economic independence in the region.

The research adopted a descriptive survey design, employing both primary and secondary data sources. Structured questionnaires were administered to 200 respondents, including youths, small business owners, and officials of entrepreneurship development agencies within Obio-Akpor LGA. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis to examine the relationship between entrepreneurship policies and youth employment outcomes.

Findings revealed that entrepreneurship policies such as access to credit facilities, skill acquisition programs, business incubation centers, and government-sponsored empowerment schemes have a significant positive influence on youth employment and self-reliance. However, challenges such as limited access to finance, inadequate training facilities, policy inconsistency, and infrastructural deficits hinder the full realization of these policies’ objectives.

The study concludes that effective entrepreneurship policy implementation plays a crucial role in fostering youth empowerment and reducing unemployment in Obio-Akpor. It recommends that government and private stakeholders strengthen policy execution, enhance youth-oriented financing programs, and promote entrepreneurial education to build a resilient and inclusive local economy.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship Policy, Youth Empowerment, Employment Opportunities, Economic Growth, Obio-Akpor LGA, Rivers State.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

In developing economies, entrepreneurship has emerged as a powerful instrument for stimulating economic growth, creating employment opportunities, and promoting innovation (Acs et al., 2018). The ability of entrepreneurship to absorb unemployed youths into productive ventures makes it an essential tool for addressing the challenges of poverty and joblessness. In Nigeria, the persistent rise in unemployment, especially among youths, has drawn attention to the importance of entrepreneurship policies as a mechanism for achieving youth empowerment and employment creation (Okafor, 2020).

Entrepreneurship policy refers to a set of government strategies and institutional frameworks designed to encourage, support, and sustain entrepreneurial activities within an economy (Lundström & Stevenson, 2017). These policies typically include access to finance, skill acquisition programs, business development services, favorable taxation systems, and infrastructure provision. According to Audretsch et al. (2019), effective entrepreneurship policies foster an enabling environment for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to thrive, thereby generating jobs and boosting economic resilience.

Nigeria’s entrepreneurship landscape has evolved over the years through various initiatives such as the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), YouWin! Program, Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YouWiN), and the N-Power Scheme. These programs were designed to address youth unemployment by empowering young people with entrepreneurial skills and start-up capital (Ugochukwu & Onu, 2020). Despite these interventions, the rate of youth unemployment remains alarmingly high, estimated at 53.4% in 2022 according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS, 2023).

In Rivers State, particularly in Obio-Akpor Local Government Area, youth unemployment and underemployment remain significant socio-economic challenges. The area is home to a growing youthful population seeking opportunities for self-employment and innovation. However, weak policy implementation, limited access to credit, inadequate training facilities, and infrastructural deficits have hampered the effectiveness of entrepreneurship development programs (Eneh, 2021).

Therefore, exploring how entrepreneurship policies contribute to youth empowerment and job creation within Obio-Akpor is vital. Understanding this relationship can guide policymakers, development agencies, and educational institutions toward improving entrepreneurship frameworks that foster economic inclusion and sustainable development.

The inability of university graduates to secure jobs several years after graduation could trigger a problem and crisis situation that increases the rate of graduate unemployment and insecurity that would eventually retard the development of the enormous human endowments and natural resources in Nigeria. In view of this situation, attacking the problems and crisis of unemployment in Rivers State presupposes on educational policy makers to design programmes that would promote the acquisition of vocational and technical skills and support graduates access to jobs after their tertiary education. Hence, Agi and Yellowe (2013) states that education serves as an important path that affords learners with the opportunity to acquire skills, knowledge, attitudes and beliefs required to aptly synthesize or create careers that induces wealth and reduces poverty as a societal problem.

Consequently, Muogbo and John-Akamelu (2018) in describing the importance and functions of education on the individual opine that acquiring these skills, knowledge, attitudes and values is central for integrating entrepreneurship education in any system. Entrepreneurship is a global initiative comprising numerous prototypes of vocational education programmes instituted to fight unemployment and its associated socio-economic trials (Asiyai, 2013). Thus, its entry or incursion into Nigeria’s educational sector is premised on adopting a National

Policy of Education with objectives to train and impart students with artistry, technical, vocational, trading, and innovative skills necessary to become self-reliant whilst still acquiring the hitherto anticipated academic competencies (Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2013).

In the same vein, Robert-Okah and Daminabo (2014) assert that the emergence of entrepreneurship education as an integral part of Nigerian tertiary educational system will strive to lessen joblessness and economic dependency among tertiary institution graduates. This advent has motivated the interest of those in academics and policy initiators both home and abroad in encouraging its implementation in mostly developing nations; and this will stimulate the creative and productive energies of graduates and undergraduates in Nigerian educational environment.

In addition, the notion underlying entrepreneurship is not entirely novel in tertiary institutions, as its model is the Student Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) introduced to cater for students’ industry experience. However, its emphasis on aiding the acquisition of skills for onward employment rather than inculcating job creation skills such as technical and vocational is indeed a major limitation that has undermined the viability of SIWES in addressing the problems of secondary school and tertiary institution leavers employability (Asiyai, 2013). Nwadiani (2011) noted that the sustainability of a formal educational process is based on its ability to instil both theoretical knowledge and practical skills on its learners. Corroborating this view, Bokhari, Alothmany and Magbool (2012) asserts that an educational system that produces graduates that continually depend on the public and private sector to provide job openings is not sustainable. Hence, Bokhari (2013) acknowledged that entrepreneurship education presents an alternative solution by inculcating self-reliant and enterprise skills that will aid graduates start new ventures and employ others.

Deductively, entrepreneurship education instils in individuals attitudes, skills and abilities that can be applied to create and start careers that overtime would benefit the society and economy. It is a groundbreaking development involved in the generation of commercial enterprise centered on novel merchandise which differs meaningfully from services offered by competing merchants in content or its promotion. In view of this, students are tutored to develop their cognitive, affective, behavioural and psychomotor skills. This would broaden students horizon to visualize entrepreneurship training as an inspiration to innovate and create jobs, openings, ventures and skills that could be leveraged upon even while in school to solve the unemployment problem wrecking the society.

In the same vein, Robert-Okah and Daminabo (2014) asserts that entrepreneurship education deals with the training and instructions undertaking by people who are desirous to develop ideas that will create jobs for themselves and engage others in creating job opportunities that are legitimate in nature for the purposes of earning a living and resources in the existing job. Suggesting to this, Faizan and Haque (2016) asserts that education is deemed successful when it effectively solves the problems or challenges confronting the society such as unemployment and insecurity etc. Hence, entrepreneurial education primarily develops the innovative capacities and mind-sets that will help students or graduates identify business openings, mobilize resources and exploit self-reliant opportunities for individual, community and national development (Gamede & Uleanya, 2018, Undiayaundeye, 2015).

Furthermore, entrepreneurship education as a concept is associated with several activities among which include; innovation, risk taking, visionary, creativity, financial control, resolute, self-confidence, versatile, knowledgeable, optimist, purposeful, profit oriented, persistent, persevering, and futuristic (Anho, 2011). Thus, aptly undertaking these activities hinges on students exhibiting entrepreneurial skills that culminate to promote sustainable educational development in the society (Thom-Otuya & Thom-Otuya, 2008). In view of this, entrepreneurship education is now introduced as a standalone department/unit or offered as course curriculum in virtually all tertiary institutions (including universities) in Nigeria. Okon and Uke (2015) stated that entrepreneurship education bequests relevant practical skills, knowledge and orientation that will enable university students upon graduation to become selfemployed and employers of labour.

Instructively, entrepreneurship is indeed a timely initiative to enthrone self-reliance, creativity and enterprise mind-set, as a formula to solve the rising emotional, social, economic and societal development problems associated with graduates or school leavers’ unemployment in Rivers State. In supporting this view, Undiayaundeye (2015) opined that creativity effectively plays the role of being the stimulus, catalyst, and engine towards developing the ideas, mind-set, techniques, and views that are integrated to acquire and exhibit entrepreneurship education conceptualized as skills, knowledge and training. Thus, Haque, Faizan and Cockrill (2017) emphasized that creativity is essentially a novel and valuable asset that entrepreneurs leverage upon to develop new solutions that climaxes in endowing the right experience, knowledge, skill and capacity requisite to discover and explore new and unique revenue earning jobs and career path. Consequently, the crux of this study is to scrutinize the roles of entrepreneurship instruction and graduates unemployment in OBIO-AKPOR of Rivers State.

Educational processes are designed to impart the skill, knowledge and expertise that could be leveraged upon to avert unemployment and its maladies (like violence, poverty, idleness, etc.) in Nigeria. In this regard, entrepreneurship education aptly fits as the medium towards empowering and developing the skill, knowledge and training likely to advance both individual and societal capacity and economy. Conversely, Oladele, Akeke and Oladunjoye (2011) stated that the non-exposure of youths to technical, vocational or entrepreneurial skills induced by the inappropriate curricula of integrating entrepreneurship education as a course, department or unit in tertiary institutions; is indeed a problem that escalates youths job mismatch and unemployment in Nigeria.

Furthermore, utilizing educational programmes to tackling a serious societal problem

(like unemployment) correctly suffices in the initiation of entrepreneurship education.

Entrepreneurship education endows on learners, trainees or graduates certain creative, adaptability, imaginative, innovative, intellectual, and interpersonal skills that enable them to discover, adjust, explore and execute plans, activities and enterprises towards becoming selfreliant, self-employed and employers even while schooling or upon graduation. Unfortunately, and sadly too, this core objective integrating entrepreneurship educational policy in Nigeria’s university curriculum, is systematically sandwiched into theoretical postulations as against emphasis on the practical acquisition of skills that could transform individual’s capacities, abilities or potentials. This ridicules the various efforts instituted in designing an entrepreneurship course in universities.

Previous studies (Okon & Uke, 2015) centred on entrepreneurial education as a panacea for youth unemployment in Nigeria. Abdul (2018) focuses on entrepreneurial skills and growth of Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs) in Nigeria and United Kingdom. But not much was done to x-ray the contributions of entrepreneurship education towards developing graduates intellectual and self-reliance skills. Consequently, this study seeks to probe into the effect of entrepreneurship education and graduate unemployment in OBIO-AKPOR of Rivers State. This was premised on the report by NBS (2020) that Rivers State like Akwa-Ibom State join the list of states with the highest number of unemployed citizens in Nigeria. Specifically, the purposes of this study were to determine:

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Unemployment among Nigerian youths has become one of the most pressing socio-economic challenges in the 21st century. The situation is exacerbated by poor policy implementation, inadequate funding of entrepreneurship schemes, and the mismatch between entrepreneurial training and market realities (Ihugba et al., 2019). Despite the establishment of several government programs aimed at youth empowerment, the majority of Nigerian youths still lack access to practical entrepreneurial skills, financial support, and enabling environments to start or sustain businesses (Adejumo, 2020).

In Obio-Akpor LGA, the problem is particularly evident in the growing number of educated yet unemployed youths who remain dependent on scarce public sector jobs. Entrepreneurship policies that should provide a pathway to self-employment often fail due to bureaucratic bottlenecks, corruption, and inadequate monitoring mechanisms (Uche & Nwogwugwu, 2022).

Furthermore, many youths in the area are unaware of available entrepreneurship support programs or lack the skills to access funding opportunities from agencies such as the Bank of Industry (BOI), Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), and Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL). Consequently, the expected link between entrepreneurship policy and youth empowerment remains weak, leading to persistent unemployment and socio-economic stagnation.

This study, therefore, seeks to assess the effect of entrepreneurship policies on youth empowerment through employment opportunities in Obio-Akpor LGA of Rivers State, with the aim of identifying gaps, challenges, and possible solutions.

Objectives of the Study

To examine the extent to which entrepreneurship policies implemented in Obio-Akpor Local Government Area have contributed to youth employment opportunities within the last five years
To assess the influence of government supported entrepreneurship training programmes on the employability skills of youth in Obio-Akpor Local Government Area
To determine the effect of access to entrepreneurship funding and grants on youth-owned start-ups in obio-akpor lga.
To evaluate the role of business incubation and mentorship initiatives in promoting youth self-employment in obio-akpor lga
To identify the challenges limiting the effectiveness of entrepreneurship policies in enhancing youth empowerment and employment creation in obio-akpor lga.

1.4 Research Questions

To what extent have entrepreneurship policies contributed to youth employment opportunities in Obio-Akpor Local Government Area within the last five years
How do entrepreneurship training influence the employability skills of youth in Obio-Akpor Local Government Area
What effect do access to entrepreneurship funding and grants have on youth-owned start-ups in obio-akpor lga.
How do business incubation and mentorship initiatives promote youth self-employment in obio-akpor lga
What challenges limit the effectiveness of entrepreneurship policies in empowering youths and creating employment in obio-akpor lga.

1.5 Research Hypotheses

The following hypotheses were tested:

H₀₁: Entrepreneurship policy has no significant effect on youth empowerment opportunities in Obio-Akpor LGA.

H₀₂: Entrepreneurship training programme has no significant influence on employability skills of youths in Obio-Akpor LGA.

H₀3: Access to entrepreneurship funding and grants has no significant effect on youth-owned start-ups in obio-akpor lga.

H₀4: Business incubation and mentorship initiatives do not significantly promote youth self-employment in obio-akpor lga

H₀5: Challenges affecting entrepreneurship policies do not significantly limit youth empowerment and employment creation in obio-akpor lga.

1.6 Significance of the Study

This study is significant for several reasons. It provides empirical insights into how entrepreneurship policy impacts youth empowerment and employment creation at the local level. Policymakers and government agencies will find the findings useful for redesigning entrepreneurship programs to better align with youth needs and market demands (Acs et al., 2018).

For academics and researchers, the study contributes to the growing literature on entrepreneurship development and policy implementation in Nigeria. For youths and entrepreneurs, it highlights available policy frameworks and opportunities for accessing funding, training, and mentorship. Lastly, development organizations and NGOs can utilize the results to design targeted interventions that foster inclusive growth and self-reliance among Nigerian youths.

1.7 Scope of the Study

The study focuses on entrepreneurship policies and their impact on youth empowerment through employment opportunities in Obio-Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State. It examines government and private sector initiatives aimed at promoting entrepreneurship among youths, with emphasis on training, funding, and regulatory support mechanisms. The study population includes young entrepreneurs, unemployed youths, and officials of entrepreneurship development agencies.

The study is limited to the 2020–2024 policy period to capture recent developments in Nigeria’s entrepreneurship ecosystem.

1.8 Limitations of the Study

The major limitations include difficulties in obtaining accurate data due to respondents’ reluctance to disclose business or financial information. Limited access to recent policy documents also posed challenges. Additionally, logistical constraints such as time and financial resources affected the extent of field coverage. Despite these limitations, efforts were made to ensure the reliability and validity of collected data.

1.9 Operational definition of terms

Entrepreneurship: The process of identifying, developing, and exploiting business opportunities for profit and societal development (Lundström & Stevenson, 2017).

Entrepreneurship Policy: A set of government actions, strategies, and programs designed to stimulate entrepreneurship, innovation, and business growth (Audretsch et al., 2019).

Youth Empowerment: The process of equipping young people with the skills, resources, and opportunities needed to achieve self-reliance and contribute to economic development (Okafor, 2020).

Employment Opportunities: Access to job creation avenues, either through self-employment or formal sector engagement, resulting from supportive economic policies.

Obio-Akpor LGA: A local government area in Rivers State, Nigeria, characterized by a rapidly growing urban economy and a youthful population.

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