Nigeria faces a seemingly intractable unemployment crisis following a clear absence of sound job creation strategies by successive administrations. At a recent two-day workshop in Abuja, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, described the jobless rate in the country as alarming. He was not only concerned about the disquieting 23.1 per cent rate of unemployment, quoting the National Bureau of Statistics, he was also astounded by the shocking prospect of it reaching 33.5 per cent by next year.
This definitely puts Nigeria’s unemployment rate at one of the worst possible positions in the world. With figures like these, Nigeria faces very daunting challenges in her bid to dump her current unenviable status as home to the highest number of extremely poor people in the world, a position she assumed after displacing India last year. With a total population of 201 million people, the country had 91 million people dubbed extremely poor by the Brookings Institution. According to the American think tank, and the World Poverty Clock, six Nigerians fall into extreme poverty every minute.
It comes as very depressing, at a time when other countries are making progress in job creation and lifting their people out of poverty; it betrays Nigeria as a laggard that cannot just keep pace with her peers. A new report by the International Labour Organisation – World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2019 – says the global unemployment rate has dropped to five per cent, the lowest since the global economic crisis of 2008. Similarly, in the United States, the rate of unemployment has dropped to 3.8 per cent, the lowest since 1969.
These are cheery pieces of news that Nigerians would have gladly embraced. Although already enmeshed in a welter of social and economic vices, including banditry, armed robbery, militancy, kidnapping and insurgency, the country requires a hands-on approach towards tackling unemployment because of its propensity to escalate into other social ills.
Although there are very few who can leave lucrative jobs to go into crime, many of those who embrace crime do so because they are not gainfully employed. In a paper, “Youth Unemployment and Crime in France”, published in the Journal of the European Economic Association, in 2009, a strong link was established between crime and unemployment. The writers said, “To combat crime, it appears thus that all strategies designed to combat youth unemployment should be examined.”
The government, no doubt, acknowledges the immense challenge posed by unemployment. Ngige said, “It is a thing of joy to note that Nigeria has not been resting on her oars over the years in terms of dedicated efforts to curb the unemployment problem.” Unfortunately, however, the government has not been able to come up with pragmatic measures to ameliorate the crisis. Efforts such as the N-Power, SURE-P, YouWin and TraderMoni have been merely cosmetic.
To get to the bottom of the crisis, the government will have to acknowledge that it cannot provide all the jobs that are needed, but can only create the enabling environment for private sector-led job creation initiatives. For instance, there is no magic wand that can create jobs for the teeming unemployed Nigerians when the power supply situation in the country is still at its present bleak state. It is unbelievable that after two decades of democratic rule, and with billions of naira having gone down the drain, the country still operates with between 3,874 and 4,281 megawatts of power; it is simply appalling.
It is a known fact that an economy like Nigeria’s needs large infusion of foreign direct investment to flourish. But the country has failed to attract investors as a result of an unprecedented level of insecurity, resulting in entire villages being sacked by bandits and military bases being run over by terrorists on an unimaginably frequent basis. Dozens of Nigerians get killed daily, either by Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram members, bandits, kidnappers or armed robbers. Foreigners are preferred victims even though nobody is spared.
The business environment has been so tough that many companies have had to fold up, throwing many hands into the labour market. Companies close down in Nigeria and relocate across the border from where their products are then imported into the country. Just last week, it was reported that 19 enamelware firms had folded up, just as 250,000 workers in the steel and enamelware value chain were on the verge of losing their jobs.
The Nigerian government, both at the state and federal levels, has to shift attention from oil to the agriculture sector, where massive employment opportunities beckon. Kebbi State, for instance, earned about N150 billion from the sale of rice in 2017, according to the Governor, Abubakar Bagudu. Other states also have areas of comparative advantage, with the South-West having a rich history of cultivating cocoa and the South-South and South-East being suitable for the cultivation of palm produce.
Nigeria stands a chance of creating millions of jobs by making the environment suitable for manufacturing. The textile industry alone could produce hundreds of thousands of jobs as it used to do in the past, while removing the impediments at the ports would facilitate the movement of goods meant for export and import. These are openings that could create jobs for many of the idle hands currently waiting for the devil to provide them work.
Instead of sharing peanuts such as N10,000 TraderMoni to a few Nigerians in the name of encouraging them to go into business, the government stands a chance of creating more jobs by coming up with policy initiatives that will not cost it anything and fixing the dilapidated infrastructure across the country.
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