INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF SKILL ACQUISITION ON YOUTH ENTREPRENEURIAL SELF-EFFICACY IN NIGERIA

Unemployment has become a major challenge in the entire world. It is worse and more challenging in Africa and other under-developed countries with low gross domestic product (GDP) and pervasive poverty. The restraint effects of unemployment on every economy are enormous  especially on the youths who are deprived of contributing to the socio-economic development of their countries. To address this, successive governments in Nigeria have introduced several programmes and made skill acquisition compulsory in all educational institutions. The expectation from the training is for the beneficiaries to take advantage of these skill acquisition schemes and establish their own businesses. These expectations are borne out of the thinking that increased self-efficacy will enhance the translation of skills acquired to entrepreneurship. Despite the various skill acquisition centres, unemployment seems not to have abated hence a need to examine the effect of skill acquisition on youth entrepreneurial self efficacy. The research design employed for the study was the Cross-sectional survey method. Questionnaire were distributed to 382 but 355 respondents returned their questionnaire which represents approximate 93% of the sample size and analyzed. The method of data analysis applied was descriptive and inferential statistics such as frequencies, percentages and regression analysis. Findings from the study revealed a significant positive relationship between skill acquisitions and youth's entrepreneurial self-efficacy. It was recommended that the designers of skill acquisition training programmes should pay attention to the suite of activities and the time and resources allocated to them.