CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1Background of the study
Poverty and unemployment are two evils that weigh on the Nigerian state at present. Reports from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) (2005) show that “the poor population has steadily increased from 17.7 million in 1988 to 66.7 million in 2004.” In 2010, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that 60.9% of Nigerians lived in poverty. The World Poverty Ratchet in 2018 declared that Nigeria had adopted the despicable position of being the world capital of poverty after having overtaken India, with about 86.9 million people in extreme poverty (Vanguard, 2019). To corroborate this statement, the National Bureau of Statistics in the National Base Survey of 2012 postulates that more than half of Nigeria’s young population in the country is unemployed. Poverty and the unemployment rate continue to rise vertically, resulting in social problems of more monumental and complex proportions, trying to challenge popular government interventions to improve them. Since 1999, each government has had its signature, reducing poverty or reducing poverty, whatever it is called. The government of President Olesegun Aremu Obasanjo (1999-2007) launched the National Program for the Eradication of Poverty (NAPEP), which aims to reduce poverty. According to Anyebe (2015), NAPEP was established in 2010 as the lead agency of the federal government to eradicate extreme poverty in Nigeria. The main program of this program includes the Youth Empowerment Program and the National Resource Conservation and Development Program. The author also revealed that,
