Unemployment and Youth Restiveness in Rivers State: A Review of Port Harcourt Metropolis, Nigeria

Abstract

Unemployment is an unwanted social trend and its effects on the aggrieved youth are geared towards crime. This chronic sense of grievance was created by the highly unequal distribution of resources to and within the region exacerbated by negligence on the part of oil multinational companies and government with respect to environmental protection and a failure on the multinational companies to create local employment as well as support local entrepreneurship. This has resulted to the levels of violence driven by criminality, impunity and corruption in the Niger Delta. Despite the attempts made by successive administrations to manage unemployment and youth restiveness in Rivers State, the issue is generating more attention as never before. The social indicators used as a measuring rod of unemployment are crime types that were not existing in the state before now such as kidnapping and hostage taking, pipeline vandalization, youth restiveness to mention a few. To achieve the objectives of this study, Port Harcourt metropolis was divided into four zones namely: Trans-Amadi, Diobu, Borokiri and GRA zones. For easy analyses of data, questionnaire, interview and observational techniques were employed to get the primary data. Three research hypotheses were formulated and questionnaire was developed in line with the research hypotheses and were analysed using z —test of mean based on Likert principle of strongly agreed (SA), Agreed (A), undecided (UD), Strongly Disagreed (SD) and disagreed (D). The researcher recommends that the establishment and funding of skills acquisition centres in all the wards of the state will reduce the pace of violence in Port Harcourt metropolis and Rivers State in general.

Keywords: Unemployment, youth restiveness, kidnapping, Hostage taking, pipeline vandalization.