SOCIAL INTERVENTION

The study assessed the influence of social intervention programmes of the Federal Government on reducing unemployment in Edo State, Nigeria. Four research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Descriptive survey research design was used for the study. The population of the study was 156 masters degree students from University of Benin and Ambrose Alli University in Edo State in 2018/2019 academic session. There was no sampling as the entire population was used for the study. Questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts. Chronbach alpha statistics was used to compute the reliability of the instrument which yielded a correlation coefficient of 0.78. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation. The t-test was used to test the hypotheses. The study revealed that N-power, conditional cash transfer, homegrown school feeding and micro-credit scheme reduced unemployment in Edo State. It also revealed that male and female graduates did not differ significantly in their ratings on the extent social intervention programmes reduced unemployment in Edo State; same goes for young and old graduates hence the null hypotheses acceptance. From the results of the analysis, it was concluded that the extent of social intervention programmes such as N-power, conditional cash transfer, homegrown school feeding and micro-credit scheme (market/tradermoni) on reducing unemployment in Edo State was high. Consequently, it was recommended that a systematic approach should be developed for the transfer of N-power beneficiaries into the core public service at the end of their internship for programme employment sustainability. Furthermore, funding towards school feeding programme should be consistent and regular across the local governments so as impact on everyone on thevalue chain towards employment generation. Finally, recommendations were made for further studies such as determinants influencing the implementation of social intervention programmes in Nigeria.