Youth Empowerment Program In Nigeria: A Strategy For Poverty Alleviation And National Development

Development is a process of attaining sustainable growth and the system's ability to cope with periodic changes in the realization of political, economic and social development through policies and programs. Successful governments in Nigeria have introduced several programs to alleviate poverty and attain national development. This paper is positioned on the qualitative method of social science research using secondary sources of data to examine the impact of the Youth Empowerment Program (YEP) on poverty reduction and national development. The study reveals that Low GDP growth, economic recession, and low investment are direct causes in the shrinking demand for job opportunities for the teeming unemployed youth and above all a mirror image of the state of an economy. It, therefore, explains that YEP has not alleviated poverty among the target beneficiaries and has insignificantly contributed to national development. The paper attributed poor performance of YEP to the high rate of unemployment in the country and therefore recommends for empowering the youth by exposing them into different vocational skills may help them to engage into sustainable-income and self-empowerment for national development which will lead to sustained poverty alleviation.