Evaluation of Entrepreneurship as a remedy to Youth Unemployment in Ondo State

Despite the abundance of mineral and natural resources in Ondo State and the various intervention policies of the government at state and federal levels, youth unemployment continues to rise exponentially. Available statistics shows that there is no motivation for entrepreneurial skills acquisition among the youth. This has hindered economic growth and job creations. This paper aims to evaluate the entrepreneurship as a remedy to the lingering menace of youth unemployment in Ondo State. To gather primary information for investigation, opinions of 260 respondents obtained by self-administered questionnaire were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics. The sample size comprised unemployed youths across the three (3) senatorial districts of the state, staff of National Directorate of Employment (NDE) in Akure, political office holders and Ondo State government officials that were purposively selected for the quantitative exercise. The study revealed that youth unemployment rate is high in Ondo State and the causes of unemployment were attributed to poor industrialization drive, insecurity, defective education curricular, infrastructural deficit and inconsistent government policies on education among others. The study also revealed that the entrepreneurship programmes and skill acquisition trainings of the federal and state governments have no significant impact on job generation as a result of corrupt practices and poor funding of various job creation schemes among others. It is therefore recommended that government needs to collaborate with informal sectors to create employment and rejig its school curricular to incorporate entrepreneurial courses that can drive employment generation, provide adequate funds for entrepreneurship programmes and avail entrepreneurs the financial support to start up medium and small scale business ventures.