Home Economics: A pathway to economic recovery in Nigeria

The last few years in Nigeria turned out to be years of downturn in economic activities and increased hardship for poor. Nigeria is said to be witnessing what the economists call economic recession. A period marked with significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than few months. There has been a gradual rise in the price of goods and services and government at all levels are incapable of paying the salaries of its workers. The paper discussed the concepts of economic recession with specific emphasis on the causes. The paper also discussed the concept of economic recovery, a period of gradual increase in business and economic activities signaling the end of a recession as well as the roles of Home Economics education in economic recovery. The much talk about skill acquisition has basically concentrated on the acquisition of self-reliant skills via entrepreneurial programmes with less emphasis on the core of entrepreneurship and consumer satisfaction. The paper concludes that Home Economics as a skill-based and entrepreneurial discipline can address the issue of unemployment, poor consumer patronage of locally-made goods and over reliance on monthly salaries through the family as the smallest unit in the society.