Poverty and Coping Strategies of Unemployed Youths in Cross River State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigates how unemployed youths in Cross River state respond to and cope with poor economic conditions. The phenomenon of poverty has been identified as one of the increasing social challenges in Nigeria and has been linked to a number of social problems including street crime, substance abuse, internet fraud, armed robbery, ritual killings, kidnapping, and youth restiveness. Scholars have also argued that whereas the youth is the locomotive of national development and contribute immensely to the sustenance of the developmental momentum of a nation; youths in Nigeria are largely unemployed and redundant. The social consequences of this are enormous and can only be explained from the lens of the restricted opportunity theory and the strain theory. The study employed a cross-sectional survey research design involving questionnaires, interviews, descriptive statistics and 1,010 purposively selected respondents from six local government areas in the three senatorial districts of Cross River. The findings of the study revealed that youth poverty is a growing concern in Cross River state, and is caused by limited access to loans, lack of job opportunities, policy paralysis, among many other factors. Respondents of the study further noted that unemployed youths in the state cope with the hardship associated with poverty and unemployment by engaging in various activities including negative ones such as commercial sex work, theft, cyber fraud, and armed robbery. It is thus recommended, among other things, that the Nigerian State must invest in youth development by creating programmes and funding for small scale businesses, vocational training, and skills development.