VOCATIONAL EDUCATION: A PANACEA TO ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

Vocational Education is pivotal to the development of youths all over the world. This is even more important in a developing economy like Nigeria, where about half of the population are youths and the rate of unemployment is high. The focus of this paper is to examine how vocational education can be leveraged for economic development and as a means of reducing youth unemployment in Nigeria. This was carried out using interviews of fifteen youth and ten lecturers selected randomly from Covenant University Ota Community. The data obtained were content analysed. The results suggest the various ways in which vocational education can be incorporated into the formal education of youths and the aspects of vocational education that youths would be more likely to want to participate in. The implications of the findings for research, education and policy are discussed.