Assessment of effectiveness and impact of agricultural youth empowerment scheme training programme in Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

Despite Nigeria's rich agricultural resource endowments, the agricultural sector has been growing at a very low rate. This has led to the gross unemployment and food shortage especially in a densely- populated state like Lagos. One of the proactive initiatives to salvage this situation is the establishment of the Agric-Youth Empowerment Scheme (Agric-YES) programme which involves training of participants in basic agricultural skills in the state to empower them and increase agricultural produce. However, effort geared towards assessing the effectiveness of government programmes in Lagos State is yet to be extended to the Agric-YES; hence the reason for this study. The study is an expo-facto type with total population of all trainees in Agric-YES programme. Purposive sampling was employed to select 100 trainees of Agric-YES Programme from 2009/2010

– 2015/2016 sessions. The data collection instruments are Standard of Living Scale (r=), Farm Training vocational skill Scale (r=). The data collected was analysed using paired t-test and the result reveals a significant improvement in basic knowledge of Agriculture (t (98) = -13.52, p<0.05), trainee vocational skill (t (98) = 14.17, p<0.05), and trainees' standard of living (t (98) = -30.81, p<0.05) when compared with their initial status before the programme. The result reveals that Agric-YES programme has bettered the lives of beneficiaries, It is then necessary for the stakeholders at different levels to focus on sustainability of the programme.