SKILLS ACQUISITION PROGRAMS AS AN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT INSTRUMENT IN EDO STATE

ABSTRACT

The broad objective of this study is to examine the effect of skill acquisition programs on the Economic development in Benin city, Edo state Nigeria. While the specific objectives were to determine the relationship between the technical and vocational skills acquisition programmes and entrepreneurial skills acquisition programmes and economic growth in Edo State, Nigeria. The survey research design was adopted for this study. The population of the study covered all trainees currently enrolled in the training hubs as well as trainees who have successfully completed their training programmes and are now practising what they learned at Edojobs in Edo State. A total of 73 copies of questionnaire were distributed and utilised for this research project. The distribution of questionnaire copies to current and past trainees of the skill acquisition programmes in Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria, employed a convenience sampling approach. The tools that was used in the analyzing the data collected is a SPSS tables, simple percentage method, and regression method. These tools made it possible for the research work to be easily analyzed, table wil be use for easy presentation of results, simple percentage will be used to easily analyze the results obtained from the questionnaires distributed while. ANOVA result from the regression was use to establish the relationship that exist between the variables. The study found out that there is a significant positive relationship between the technical and vocational skills acquisition programmes and entrepreneurial skills acquisition programmes and economic growth. The study recommended that the government needs to ensure that the right policy measures are adopted and implemented so as to ensure the active participation of the public in the skill acquisition programmes and also to engage more stakeholders by partnering with organisations to access funds for the participants of the skill acquisition programmes, and other organisations like Bank of Industry, CBN and individual investors to provide soft loans/grants that will enable participants to launch and scale their businesses.