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Archives of Business Research – Vol. 9, No. 3

Publication Date: March, 25, 2021

DOI: 10.14738/abr.93.9696. Nwaokugha, D. O. (2021). Exploring Sport as Effective Engagement Mechanism for Youth Empowerment and Youth Development

in Nigeria’s Niger Delta Region. Archives of Business Research, 9(3). 157-182.

Exploring Sport as Effective Engagement Mechanism for Youth

Empowerment and Youth Development in Nigeria’s Niger Delta

Region

Douglas O. Nwaokugha

Department of Educational Foundations Faculty of Education

University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria

ABSTRACT

The Niger Delta region of Nigeria is synonymous with crisis

occasioned by militancy, agitations and insurgency from the

youth, who in recent times have become aware of the neglect,

marginalization, human rights abuses, environmental

degradation etc, people of the region suffer in the hands of the

Nigerian government and Multinational Corporations that

explore and exploit the Niger Delta environment for its rich

natural resources. Investing time in militancy, agitations and

insurgency as presently spearheaded by youth in the region has

created more problems than solve the Niger Delta crises. Using

the philosophical method, this paper makes a case on how sport

can be an effective engagement mechanism for youth

engagement and youth empowerment. The paper sees sport as

a human engagement whose effective exploration and

utilization can lead to the empowerment of youth in Nigeria’s

Niger Delta and consequently recommends that states

intervention agencies, politicians and philanthropists should

make the provision of sport infrastructure a topmost priority

for youth development and empowerment. The paper strongly

maintains that policies that target youth empowerment in the

Niger Delta region of Nigeria will surely be a foundation for

sustainable peace and stability not only in Nigeria but across

the globe.

Keywords: Youth, Youth empowerment and development, sport,

Niger Delta, Nigeria

INTRODUCTION

Right from the beginning of the world, sport has occupied an elevated and phenomenal

position and members of different societies have receptively embraced it both as a practice

and platform for recreation, leisure, an important component of the culture of a people and

a practice to bring about many positive transformations in the affairs of man and his

society. Sport provides inspiration, relief, emotional stability and is a powerful contributor

to peace and development, with unprecedented and phenomenal potentials to reach out to

both developed, developing and underdeveloped regions of the world. So unique about

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Nwaokugha, D. O. (2021). Exploring Sport as Effective Engagement Mechanism for Youth Empowerment and Youth Development in Nigeria’s

Niger Delta Region. Archives of Business Research, 9(3). 157-182.

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/abr.93.9696.

sport is its commitment to non-violent behaviours, peace-building and the sticking or

upholding of fairness, equality, equity and strict adherence to the maintenance of rules,

order and peaceful and harmonious environment. Sport promotes team spirit, respect for

one another, tolerance and helps to reduce discrimination and stereotype. That sport can

be a veritable platform for checkmating discrimination and stereotype can be revealing

that sport is a potent and formidable force for pursuing the ideals of intercultural

communication and integration.

Sport is supportive of individual and community development as well as a source of

empowerment for individuals and states. Individuals and states that venture into sports

can launch themselves into limelight or point of regional and international recognition,

including making the individual become role models and celebrities in a twinkle of an eye.

Sports is instrumental in taking care of the health and physical conditions or well-being of

individuals including engaging and diverting individual’s attention from participating in

social vices and violent crimes. Sport is a powerful force for initiating actions that can

result in substantial improvements and development of human conditions in states that

have reach their climax on the development stake, states that have prospects for

development and states that are struggling to source out themselves and systematically

and painstakingly charting courses for their development. In a way, sport is a common

denominator that all states irrespective of their developmental sophistication can explore

for their general development. Words may be lacking to describe the numerous

opportunities that sport provides. All the same, sport can be taken as an instrument and

institution through which visions can be translated into actions and realities, or from

theory to practice.

Sport is good for everybody at least for its economic empowerments and health benefits

but a particular group that stands to benefit immensely from participation in sport and

sporting activities is the youth especially youth in resource rich and resource dependent

countries or states where the abundance of natural resources is fast turning into a resource

curse. Nigeria is one country in the world where despite being endowed with abundant

natural and human resources are fast becoming flashpoints for the bad reasons. Nigeria is

world capital for poverty and stinks with financial, social and economic contradictions so

much that it has been acknowledged locally and internationally that Nigeria and Nigerians

are fantastically corrupt. A pointer to the contradiction in the case of Nigeria is that the

huge revenues that accrue from oil and gas exploration and exploitation have not impacted

positively on the lives of Nigerians as Nigeria consistently squares zero on all the indexes

for measuring development. In fact, the generosity of God in terms of abundance of human

and natural resources has not translated into improvements in the quality of lives of the

citizens of Nigeria. Poverty, low productivity, unemployment and other terms and concepts

that reflect deficits on national development indexes are adequately visible and are terribly

becoming norms in Nigeria with Nigeria correspondingly and seriously manifesting those

symptoms that prevail in states that suffer from the tight grips of resource curse such as

violence, conflicts and instability.

One region of Nigeria that has a legendary and phenomenal history of violence is the oil,

gas and natural resource rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Violence in Nigeria’s Niger