Basic education and youth employment in Odukpani local government area of cross River State

The paper examines the comparative impact of Formal (Basic Education) and Informal Education on rural development in Odukpani Local Government Area of Cross River State, Nigeria. It is argued that Basic Education will not translate into an engine of growth and rural development, except it is tailored and adapted to meet the needs of specific rural communities. There is therefore need for Basic Education programs by the Government, to be tailored to meet the needs of different rural communities, otherwise it will have an almost zero impact on development.  The specific objectives were to examine the impact of access to Basic (formal) Education opportunity on rural development: and also, to find out the impact of acquisition of Non - formal Education through life skill acquisition on rural development in terms of human capital development and youth employment. Human capital development theory and structural model constituted the theoretical framework. Three hypotheses were formulated to guide the study and a well-structured questionnaire was used to obtain quantitative data from 400 respondents, using a multi-stage sampling procedure. The field data were analyzed using one-way Analysis of Variance ANOVA technique. On hypothesis one; the result revealed that the calculated F-value of 50.149* is higher than the critical F-value of 2.10 at 0.05 level of significance with 399 degrees of freedom, for hypothesis two, the result showed the calculated F-value of 63.424* is higher than the critical F-value of 2.01 at 0.05 level of significance with 399 degrees of freedom, under hypothesis three, the result revealed the calculated F-value of 10.849* is higher than the critical F-value of 1.52 at 0.05 level of significance with 399 degrees of freedom; which implies that Basic-Nine Education, Acquisition of skills and Formal Basic-Nine Education has significant influence on employment opportunities/income generation, and acquisition of life skills in Odukpani Local Government Area of Cross River State and therefore, very strategic for the development of rural areas. It was recommended, among others, that an accessible educational system in a conducive school environment with skill acquisition programmes should be promoted in order to enhance human capital development, labour productivity and gainful employment opportunities in rural areas.