The capability approach and national development in Nigeria: towards a youth transition model

ABSTRACT

This paper adapts a qualitative-dominant mixed method approach by utilizing policy documents, semi-structured interviews, a focus group discussion, and structured questionnaires (SQs) to explore the different bottlenecks that impedes the education–National Youth Service Corps (NYSC)–work transition, with a specific focus on the NYSC route. This paper reveals that youth’s (aged 18–30) ability to navigate the formal education phase partly depends on multi-stakeholder contributions that provide support structures to ensure youths obtain a tertiary degree before age 30. Successful completion of the formal education phase makes them eligible to be mobilized for 1-year mandatory service. While in the NYSC route, youth capability development programmes ensure that youths are further developed and deployed to opportunity structures needed to address national development needs. The challenge however is that both state mobilization processes and deployment practice create restrictive opportunity concerns that impede the effective functioning and freedoms for youth capabilities to thrive. This paper broadly contributes to human resource development practice by utilizing a youth capability analytic framework to better understand how well youth capabilities can be further developed and strategically aligned in addressing complex national development challenges as youth navigate the education–NYSC–work transition pathway.

KEYWORDS:

• Formal education
• capability approach
• youth capability development programmes
• education–NYSC–work transition
• national development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Recent findings suggest that the Boko Haram Sect mostly comprises ethnic Kanuri’s (Olojo 2013; Onuoha 2013). Olojo’s (2013) research also reinforces the US Homeland Security Report (2013) argument by citing anti-colonial movements of the 1950s which was spearheaded by the Kanuri-led Borno Youth Movement as the genesis of popular support for Boko Haram which simply interprets as ‘Western Education is Bad’.

2. Different youth respondents identified a number of youth development policy frameworks including (1) the National Poverty Eradication Programme which they argued was expected to focus on creation of Jobs in Nigeria; (2) the Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS) of the Transformation Agenda; (3) the establishment of both the OSSAP-MDGs – Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs and OSSAP-YSM – Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Youth and Students Matters; (4) the Youth Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria (YouWIN); (5) WAP – War Against Poverty; (6) MDGs – Millennium Development Goals; (7) NEEDS – National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy; (8) SURE-P – Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme; (9) the policy frameworks identified include The Youth Employment In Agriculture Programme (YEAP) initiative initiated as part of Youth Entrepreneurship Scheme of the Transformation Agenda as institutionalized by the Nigerian Bank of Industry (BOI) and Bank of Agriculture (BOA) in collaboration with the Agro-industry Department of the African Development Bank; (10) the NYSC scheme.