CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The global economic depression which started in the early 1980’s has caused a rapid deterioration in Nigeria’s economy industrial output has become very low and commercial activities are hull leading to loss of employment by thousands of Nigerians through retrenchment and rationalization in many industries. Furthermore, the formal educational sector lame continued to turn out a teaming of graduates annually without a matching increase in employment opportunities. This trend was confirmed by the labour force survey conducted by the national manpower board in 1966/67. The situation had become so bad that by the end of 1985 the unemployment situation had reached desperate and alarming proportions (10%-12%) not only in the urban area but also in the rural area while 1974 was limited to the urban centers. The resultant effect is the increase in different kinds of antisocial activities such as house breaking arrived robbery drugs trafficking etc.
In an effort to redress the situation and stem the tide of increase anti-social activities arising from youths unemployment January 1987 set up the national directorate of employment (NDE) with the aim of institutionalizing schemes to support the self-employment aspirations of the Nigerian youths. Various development plans had it as an objective to effectively solve the problems of unemployment. This has led to the initiation of various agricultural development programmes. Banks and industries were set up in the rural areas to give jobs to the rural dwellers many other programmes and polices were established but were not effective enough as to restructure the economy. Privatization and commercialization of certain government establishment led to workers being laid o from their jobs resulting in greater unemployment. This situation then made it necessary for the establishment of national directorate of employment (N.D.E) to combat the grooming problems of unemployment.
1.2. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS
The problems of unemployment in Anambra state is becoming more unbearable as it is threatening the Nigeria economy people find it difficult to survive. An alarming structure of unemployment emerged with the rising joblessness amongst graduates of tertiary institutions. The problem now is finding solution (s) to unemployment problems in Anambra state. The government on the other hand decided to alleviate this problem by embarking on self-employment schemes as one of the measures to solve the problems. However inspite of the government effort to alleviate the problems of unemployment in Anambra state unemployment still persist because not all unemployed could be deployed in the government self employment schemes provided.
