CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY:
With a high population and numerous universities in Nigeria turning out thousands of graduates each year, with no ready labour market to employ this teeming job seekers, it has become a clarion call more than ever before for “self determination”(Godwin Omena, 2012).
The trend of graduates’ unemployment is in Nigeria is presently worrisome. Many graduates do not secure employment contrary to their thought and hoped to get a white-collar job after so many years of studies in their various higher institutions in Nigeria. The uneducated ones in rural areas who supposedly would have learnt a trade or another also migrate to the urban cities looking for a white collar jobs that are non existence or in very short supply. The urge for livelihood and existence is dawning on them as a utopia, as labour scholars and social movements call on the need for apprenticeship and entrepreneurship (Hernando, 2013).
Apprenticeship has been a traditional method of acquiring skills and trades in most African and developing countries as a training for capacity building in the middle level and higher manpower, but today that trend has changed (Ariyo, 2008). Gone are the days when apprenticeship skills were learnt only by those who took it as an alternative to formal/higher education because of economic motives of low intelligence. Todays realities makes it obvious to all classes, even to universities and higher school graduates that skills acquisition through apprenticeship is the roadmap for future self employment, sustainability and development.
Apprenticeship, as it is being regulated and supervised by the old medieval guilds is not so today. Government enacts apprenticeship programs for youth empowerment, while some centuries ago, social thinkers were unanimous in their thought that apprentices, grown into artisans and entrepreneurs were to be the mainstay of the economy. This thinking is showing relevance today, with the increase in unemployment in Nigeria due to inadequate apprenticeship skill learning, regulating, enforcement and control of this process to self employment and development (Guardian Newspaper, 2012).