ENTREPRENEURSHIPEDUCATIONFORYOUTHINCLOTHING ANDTEXTILES:ADVANCINGWORKFORCEQUALITYAND ECONOMICGROWTHINSOUTH-WESTERN,NIGERIA

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is acclaimed the world over, as education for the acquisition of skills for
gainful employment and wealth creation in clothing and textiles. This study aimed at identifying
entrepreneurship skills required by youths in reduction of unemployment and economic
development of Nigeria. Entrepreneurship education skill is designed to satisfy the manpower
needs of the nation. It enhances sustainable development in clothing and textiles by fostering
innovation, environmental awareness and social responsibility. The study adopted survey
research while multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select respondents for the study.
Thesample consisted of 600 respondents who are 150 graduates and 450 undergraduates from
the selected states for the study. Questionnaire was used to collect data to answer the research
question. T-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance while descriptive
statistics was employed. The findings show among others that entrepreneurship education
programmes have a significant relationship with employment reduction among youths in
Southwest Nigeria.

The study also showed that there is significant difference between the mean
responses of graduate and undergraduate students in clothing and textiles entrepreneurship
education on economic growth among youths in Southwest Nigeria, t(598) = 2.906, p < 0.05.
Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that training and retraining of
entrepreneurial education personnel should be encouraged so as to boost their performance.
Entrepreneurial education students should be given the needed support and encouragement to
produce goods and services in order to reduce dependency ratio.