CHAPTER ONE

1.1     BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Self reliance in a general sense is what actually promotes productivity and other economic activities which obviously lead to the development of a country. From time immemorial people have always engaged in different activities such as farming, fishing, hunting, among others, in order to satisfy their basic needs and enhance their social mobility from one class to another.

Therefore, the idea of self-reliance lays heavily on youth empowerment by training of mind and body of the youth for proper intergration in to the society and for positive development. Umar Dantani states that, “the Nigerian government in collaboration with private organizations should intensify effort to provide gainful employment to the army of unemployment youth, this can be done through the establishment of micro fiancé schemes that assist the youth to

be self employed, if this is achieve, redundancy among the youth would be reduced to the bearest minimum”.1

Ibrahim Risikat Stated that, During the Obasanjo administration the Federal Government of Nigeria establish an economic institution known as National poverty Eradication programme (NPEP). This institution was mandated to give capacity building to intended youths to be self-reliant, provide loan facilities to small and large scale enterprises as well as monitor the progress of the loan facilities granted to small and large scale enterprises. To ensure wealth creation among youth under the National Poverty Eradication programme, graduates were recruited and posted to various Ministries and parastatals to learn public service activities, these graduates were paid #20,000 Monthly, in addition, capacity building and training were conducted under the auspices of attachment to a particular workshop in accordance to what the youth indicated, these activities range from welding to balkernizing, dying e.t.c. In this perspectives #5000 was given to each of the trainee and release at the expected time allocated for the

training, and also youth were granted #5000 under no capacity training.2

Hajiya Salamatu Husain Suleiman stated that, “youth (boys and girls) this category need to receives training on variety of skills in trades and profession such as tailoring, computer training, technical and commercial enterprises, such as buying, selling and farming e.t.c, which will make them to be self-reliance”3 Therefore, she added that, in addition to skills acquisition, training and empowerment programmes, educational development is also very critical.

Ibrahim Risikat suggested however, that “Small scale enterprises have been also identified as the essential support and engine for nations economic development, it is a lubricant for employment generation, poverty reduction and technological development” Therefore, given the vital and salutary roles and contribution which enterprises play in the nations economic development, the government at various levels in Nigeria have roll-out-different entrepreneurial programmes aimed at reducing the incessant unemployment

phenomenon and at the same time entrenched the sprit of self-employed philosophy in our youth instead of looking for white-collar jobs that are not there.

1.2     STATEMENT OF THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

The research project focuses on mobilizing the youth for self-reliance, by appraising the self-helps initiatives in Suru local government area, within the period of 2011-2015.

There is a general consensus from past research that, youth fell excluded from participation in development process, obviously lack of education and unemployment has resulted to an increase in the involvement of youth in various anti-social activities and offence, such as assaults, murder, stealing, armed robbery, sex offences, unlawful possession of arms e.t.c.

Every year the government at the three tiers through burdgetary allocation, policies and pronouncement have signified interest and acknowledged the crucial rules of the small scale enterprises sub-sector of the economy and hence

made policies to boast the participation of the unemployment youth. Inspite the essential role of government by introducing programmes and policies as an alternative ways of reducing poverty level. Among unemployed youth in the country, the policies and programmes introduced by the government have not been fully utilized by many unemployed graduates and the effect has been manifested in high level of crime rate.

Therefore, specifically the study would focus on two major organizations which were established in the area of study with a view to mobilizing the youths for self-reliance by getting them involved in self-help project. There are Lauwali foundation and garima Group.

Lauwali foundation was established in 2011 by senator Ibrahim Bawa Kamba and the activities involved in the foundation include electrical wiring, soap making and tailoring e.t.c. while garima group deployed the teaming number of unemployed youth to various business centres, where they were taught a number of self-reliance skills.