AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON THE EFFECT OF UNEMPLOYMENT ON NIGERIA CRIME RATE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1     BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

There are unique issues and threats of every community across the globe. It's not an exception to Nigeria. She faces her own national, political, economic and cultural challenges as a developing world that have to a large extent influenced the welfare of people. This include joblessness and the growing surge of violence, which has havocful consequences for national growth.Despite the country's plentiful human and natural resources, the unemployment rate in Nigeria continues to rise. In Nigeria the chronic insecurity of young people is apparent. Thousands of graduates are made annually, but most of them have no work. Nigerian roads are full of littered youth hawkers who ordinarily would have found profitable jobs in a company (Okafor, 2011). The large numbers of unemployed youth can undermine democratic practice because they are a grave threat to illegal and criminal activities by the political class (Adepegba, 2011; Ibrahim, 2011; Lartey, 2011; Olatunji and Abioye, 2011; Okafor, 2011).

The youth, through their artistic and inventive abilities, represent also a significant stakeholder in society and are a major part of workforce. However, the discontent of the unemployed young could be turned into crime in society in the absence of daily wages and subsistence to secure the livelihood. A huge unemployed youth is obvious in Nigeria today's workplace framework. The details given by the national labor and statistics offices that Nigeria has young people of around 80 million people is approximately 60% of the total population of the nation and from this,64 million of them are unemployed while 1.6 million are underemployed.

A large number of these youth are vigorous and have work potential, but they travel on the streets and seek hardly existing employment everyday (obaro,2012). The current state of youth unemployment in Nigeria reflects the country's long-standing general decline as a result of a number of reasons. Moreover, reliance on oil income for lack of farming sectors, the simplification of sounding and unsustainable policies, high profile corruption between politics and bureaucrats and schooling in secondary and tertiary institutions, which is aiming for salary-employment,and bereft of entrepreneurship development (Awogbenle and Iwuamadi 2010; Murphy 2008; Alanana 2003 and Fapohunda 2003). Successive government in the country have introduced various programmes to fight unemployment in order to curb criminal behaviours. it is reported that all government interventions did not have a huge impact on unemployment (Osmorodion 2010). Thus, in view of economic poverty and working life in which most youth have found themselves in this region, the immunity of the Commission of Crime is connected to youth unemployment. It is remarkable that only few studies have documented the association between the two social trends in Nigeria given the prevalent severity of youth unemployment and an increase in crime.

1.2     STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

This is why it has been important to consider the causes of unemployment, the reasons why it is continued and the necessary recommendations which will provide jobs for young people and anyone in work. Nigeria has long been confronted with the issue of youth jobless persistent employment. Many students graduate each year from tertiary and higher education institutions without any job opportunity. Hence the streets of Nigeria are full of youth hawkers who normally have found earning jobs in certain businesses or demonstrate their ability and capability when the atmosphere is enabling. The consequence is the "model" step (financial opportunity) that has taken such a great number of youth into cyber criminals commonly referred to as the '419' and fraud in connection with the Internet, known as yahoo-yahoo, dating fraud etc. Despite the fact that mechanical construction is used adequately, though, the result is the following available alternative for teenagers and young leavers of school and more experienced ones who have long been unemployed without consideration of the effect or the risks involved.The problem is that the majority of Nigerian employed graduates are underworked or are not employed in a particular study and specialization field. As many unemployed young graduates are employed as manufacturers, work along highways and roads, selling on the market, serving mum puts together and small-scale vendors, all of whom strive to achieve ends Such occupations by graduates are deception, aggressiveness, anger and ultimately unrelenting mentalities. It is no wonder that the open fraud and internet dating options are being used.Hence this study is set out to empirically study the effect of unemployment on Nigeria crime rate.

1.3     OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The primary objective of this study is to

l  To investigate crime rates in Nigeria.

l  To investigate the reasons for increase in unemployment in Nigeria.

l  To determine if creating job opportunities can be used as a tool to minimize crime rate.

1.4     RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The following research questions have been prepared for this study

1.       What is the crime rate in Nigeria?

2.       What are the reasons for the increase in unemployment in Nigeria?

3.       How can creating job opportunities be used in minimizing crime rate in Nigeria?

1.5     SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

In a world like ours where the rate of unemployment and crime is steadily rising, this analysis is very important. This research will help policy-makers to develop sound policies. Crime detection and regulation can also be helped. provides an overview of the value of creating and empowering jobs.This study will also be of great significance to scholars and researchers

1.6     SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The idea of this research work was to empirically study the effect of unemployment on crime rate in Nigeria, so this work is limited to unemployment and crime rate in Nigeria and it covers around the youth and criminal activities that can be traced to unemployment

1.7     LIMITATION OF STUDY

Time constraint, finance, were the major challenges encountered during the course of this study

1.8     DEFINITION OF TERMS

UNEMPLOYMENT: Unemployment is a term that refers to people who are willing to work and who are involved, but cannot get a job. This category includes those employees who live, but do not have a suitable career.

CRIME :An action or omission that constitutes an offense that may be prosecuted by the state and is punishable by law

---

---