Human Capital Development and Youth Restiveness in Niger Delta, Nigeria

Abstract

Youth restlessness has been a long-time feature of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria that has taken the form of violence, militancy, unemployment and social disorganisation. The region is still suffering from an instability and underdevelopment despite its high natural resources and enormous dejections of the state on intervention programmes. Thus, the paper under analysis examined the correlation between development of human capital and restlessness among youth in Niger Delta area of Nigeria. In particular, the research aimed at establishing the effect of training and development, skills and competency development, career development and promotion on the youth restlessness - poverty and economic deprivation. Human capital theory (Becker, 1964) and the Frustration-Aggression Theory (Dollard et al, 1939) were used as the foundation for the research. According to Human capital theory, education and skill investment increases productivity and socio-economic results and on the other hand, aggression and disruptive tendencies is as a result of unmet socio-economic needs and this is evident in the case of the restive youth in the region. A quantitative research design was adopted; it was based on cross-sectional survey. The positivist research philosophy was followed in the study and this presupposes that the social reality can be objectively measured by means of empirical observation and statistical analysis. The sample consisted of the employees of the selected agencies dealing with the youth development and community leaders and youths in three states in Niger Delta. A stratified random sampling technique was adopted in order to take a sample size of 400 respondents to give the sufficient representation. A structured questionnaire was created as a primary data collection method; however, this was tried out and confirmed by a test using an expert and a pilot test. The reliability measure of Cronbach alpha coefficients of all the constructs was found to be greater than 0.70 to determine the reliability of the instrument. Analysis of data was done using frequencies and spearman rank correlation coefficient with 0.05 level of significance. The result revealed that there is a negative significant correlation between all the measures of human capital development and youth restiveness in Niger Delta. The research concluded that human capital investments bring about less frustration and guarantee socio-economic stability. The research recommended that governments and players in the private sector should improve vocational training, entrepreneurship training and skill acquisition centres to be able to provide employability and economic inclusion. The research input were the combination of Human Capital and Frustration-Aggression theories as used to explain the socio-economic nature of restlessness, empirically proved that development of human capital is a strategic instrument of conflict reduction and sustainable peace in resource endowed yet restless states, such as the Niger Delta.