Reducing Youth Unemployment, Underemployment and Poverty Level: Corporate Apprenticeship Programme [CAP] Route

Abstract

The unemployment rate in Nigeria is put at 23.1% by the National Bureau of Statistics with the nation having 82.9 million (40.1%) of her citizenries living below the poverty line of N 137, 430 per year. The young people (aged 15-35years) are worst hit with an unemployment/underemployment rate of 55.4%. To create a basis for this work, interviews were conducted, and a questionnaire administered among 612 people, aged 15-34 years across three states in southwest Nigeria. Youth without skill and with informal skill accounted for 68.12% of the respondents, while unemployment and underemployment accounted for 62.6%. To mitigate youth unemployment and lack of skills, the paper proposes a Corporate Apprenticeship Program model. The proposed model has two entry points, one for a person with at least secondary education and the other for persons without secondary education. The apprenticeship’s scheme will combine paid work with controlled on-the-job training and classroom-based associated technical instruction (provided by an institution) at the firm’s premises. This will