Marketing Communications Strategy for Curbing Youths’Unemployment through Farming in Nigeria

Abstract

The rate of youths’ unemployment and poverty in Nigeria has been adjudged by the World Bank and the United Nations development index over the years to be so high. This has invariably stunted the country annual gross domestic product and economic development over the past twenty years. All efforts of various governments of the country to reverse this ugly trend through some laudable projects like skills acquisition programmes, small and medium-scale enterprises micro-credits, poverty alleviation and other programmes have not met with the requisite results, due to the get-rich-quick and consequent culture of unproductivity exhibited by the youths, who were the target beneficiaries. The newly sworn-in President, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, has vowed to address this problem through youths’ massive participation in farming. To what extent could marketing communications tools of  African traditional media, word-of-mouth communications (WOM), electronic-word of mouth communications (eWOM) and social-media communications be of help? This study tried to find out. Survey design was employed in gathering data which were statistically analyzed. Results indicate that the applications of African traditional media, word-of-mouth communications (WOM), electronic-word of mouth communications (E-WOM) and social-media communications, which are popular amongst the Nigerian youths will be effective marketing communications tools for motivating the youths into adopting the farming culture for poverty alleviations. That will also help in significantly changing the get-rich-quick mentality of the average Nigerian youth. Thus, it was recommended amongst other things that a nationwide marketing communications campaign based on WOM, E-WOM and social-media as major tools should be used to effectively promote youths’ participation in farming, so as to solve youths’ unemployment, poverty and crime in the land. Keywords: Marketing Communications, Farming, Youths’ Unemployment, Poverty Eradication