Economic recession in its simplest explication is the decline in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of any country. For over 25 years, recession set in Nigeria in 2015 with the oil price adjustment that affected global economy. Its effect on the country’s export has been punishing, seeing export and government revenues decline rapidly. This is due to some factors that include the fact that oil is Nigeria’s main source of foreign exchange earnings and government and financial revenue; insurgency in the North East of Nigeria and the agitating activities of the Niger/Delta region which has seen Chevron and some oil prospecting companies, the straightening of dollar which has made the Naira of less value. The study determine the extent to which the recession has affected students of school age. It describes the process of Theatre for Development (TFD) in the University of Calabar International Demonstration Secondary School (UCIDSS) as a means of evaluating the students’ knowledge of economic recession and how the recession has affected their studies and career choice. The issues discussed here came from the students, enabling them develop critical reasoning that will help them rekindle their ambitions as well as eliciting their knowledge of changes around their environment. Methodologically, Semi-Structured Interview, TFD and other participatory methodologies like FGD and playmaking were used and for those students who may have issues discussing their views in problem, Key informant Interview was applied.

Methodological flexibility and substantive creativity are important internal dynamics that ensure the development of social capital in children's projects. They help to support cultural and sensory spaces to ensure that children participate equitably in projects. This paper aims to foreground how agency and participation, which ostensibly nurture social capital, were handled through purposeful creativity. It uses Gombe Children's Theatre Project (GCTP) as a case study. Its goal is to explore the realization of children's social capital by using Local Human Development (LHD) and Child's Rights Convention (Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989) as theoretical approaches to evaluating the project. Among other findings, the study reveals that agency and participation are determinants of social capital. The success is due to the effective conditions that provided such response to collective consolidation. In a dysfunctional social system, it is difficult to knit the confidence of different stakeholders to produce a noticeable positive outcome. However, the Children's Theatre Project has provided a participatory framework giving the stakeholders full control. The issue in question is of value for all the project participants, therefore, it is necessary to provide a freer space where the students could address the challenges typical for their schools. This lacuna is the result of limited time available to the university and school students alike.

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