Abstract

Formal vocational education is purported to equip citizens with functional skills that can reduce their dependence on public employment and charity. In Nigeria, this statement has assumed great significance due to the worsening unemployment and pervasive poverty among the citizens. The fact that youths and even adults may develop or build capacities that can facilitate self-employment is a sure way of alleviating poverty in Nigeria. This paper is designed to examine the extent to which formal vocational training can help Nigerians to increase their productive capacity in order to alleviate poverty that has for a long time devastated development and rendered people vulnerable to diseases and concomitant vices. Experimental design was adopted for the study. The sample consisted of 400 adults randomly selected from semi-rural areas of Cross River State of Nigeria, aged 20-40 years. The experimental and control groups had 200 participants each. They were pre-tested using the instrument called Formal Vocational Training for Poverty Reduction Course (FVTPRC). The experimental group were exposed to training for six months in the area of craft, welding, plumbing, tailoring, small-scale farming technique, blacksmithing, carpentry, barbing and music, after which were allowed to practice for one year. They were visited after this period and were required to unobtrusively declare their annual income for the period they have practised their trade. The result showed that the experimental group performed significantly better as seen by the higher mean x scores for all the training sub-groups except for the tailoring sub-theme. It was concluded that formal vocational training is effective in skill acquisition which in turn help in alleviating poverty.