Entrepreneurial Skills Needed by Secondary School Dropouts for Harvesting and Marketing of Periwinkle as a Source of Livelihood in Olamaboro LGA, Kogi State, Nigeria

The study was carried out to identify Entrepreneurial Skills Needed by Secondary School Dropouts for Harvesting and Marketing of Periwinkle as a Source of Livelihood in Calabar. Two research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses were tested in the study. The study adopted a survey research design and the population of the study was 224 registered periwinkle harvesters in the study area from which a sample of 156 was selected through accidental sampling technique. The instrument used for data collection was questionnaire titled Skills Needed for Harvesting and Marketing of Periwinkle Questionnaire (SNHMPQ) which was face validated by three experts in the Department of Vocational Education in University of Calabar. The reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach alpha technique which yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.92. The data obtained was analyzed using independent t-test analysis to test the null hypothesis at a 0.05 level of significance while mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions. The findings revealed that all the identified skilled items in the area of harvesting and marketing were needed by secondary school dropouts for harvesting and marketing of periwinkle. Based on the findings, it was recommended that the identified skills should be included into secondary schools curriculum for students and be packaged as a training programme for the dropouts which could help them to be self reliant and self sustaining.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial, Skills, Periwinkle, Dropouts, Harvesting, Marketing, Livelihood.