THE NIGERIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
ISSN: 0331-4111 e-ISSN: 2736-075X
Volume 24, No. 2, November 2026
Pages 151-168
DOI: 10.36108/NJSA/6202.42.0290
Youth Unemployment and Crime Rates in Gwagwalada Area Council, Abuja, Nigeria
Jacob E. Adaah, Musa Abdullahi, Patricia Taiwo and Grace Egwu
Department of Sociology, University of Abuja, Nigeria
Abstract
Youth unemployment and its attendant consequence of increased crime rates have consistently remained a global and scholarly concern. The study examines the incidence of youth unemployment and crime rates in Gwagwalada Area Council, Abuja. Its specifically investigated the prevalence of unemployment, the extent of youth involvement in crime and commonly perpetrated crimes in the study area. Descriptive survey design involving a mixed-methods approach was adopted by administering questionnaire on 376 youth and key informant interview with 10 community leaders and 10 police officers. Quantitative data are analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics while the qualitative data was content analyzed. Majority of the respondent (67.3%) are males, nearly half (44.9%) are single and a quarter are aged 18-31. While 44.7% of the youth reported never been employed, 60.4% reported been currently unemployed. All the youth (100%) attested to youth involvement in crime, while 62.8% reported a high extent of youth involvement. The types of crimes reported by a large majority of youth due to unemployment include cybercrime (97.9%), stealing/theft (96%), burglary and house breaking (94.1%), thuggery (93.9%), robbery (93.1%), alcohol, drugs and substance abuse (90%), kidnapping and abduction (85.1%) etc. The study concludes that high youth unemployment contributes to the upsurge in crime rates in the study area and recommends a wholistic approach that promotes development of infrastructures for informal, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors, as well as empowerment programmes, entrepreneurship, revision of educational system, provision of credits and loans and career guidance to tackle youth unemployment in order to mitigate crime rates.
Keywords: Crime prevalence, unemployment rate, incidence of youth criminality