Participation of Prison Inmates in Vocational Skills Acquisition Programmesfor Self- Reliance and Sustainable Economic Growth in SokotoState, Nigeria

The study focused on assessing the extent of participation of prison inmates in vocational skills acquisition programmes in SokotoState. The main objective of the study was to assess the extent of participation of prison inmates in vocational skills acquisition programmes for self – reliance and sustainable economic growth in SokotoState. One research question and one null hypothesis guided the study. A survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 1226 respondents at the time of the study. The sample size of the study was 351 comprising all the 85 prison officials and 266 convicted prisoners of the Sokoto central prison deliberately selected for the study. The instrument used for data collection was self-structured questionnaire tagged “Questionnaire on the participation of prison inmates in vocational skills acquisition programmes (QPPIVSAP). The instrument was subjected to face validation by three experts. The reliability coefficient for the instrument was 0.80. The data collected was analysed using descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation, while the null hypothesis was tested using t-test at the probability of 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that VSA programmes for prison inmates were only found available in Sokoto Central Prison and there were prison inmates trainees in the prison. The findings further revealed that the trainees participated in the available VSA programmes to a high extent in the study area. Based on these findings, the study recommended among others that the Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS) should extend the VSA programmes to other convict and satellite’s prisons for inmates’ self – reliance and sustainable economic growth of the state and the country at large. The NPS should introduce more vocational trades that are not available in the prisons. Such as electrical and electronics repairs, graphic arts, shoe making and automobile mechanic skills acquisition programmes while the prison inmates should be encouraged to patronize the programmes for their self-reliance and sustainable economic growth of the society.