Curbing unemployment menace in Nigeria
Despite efforts made by Federal Government to tackle unemployment among Nigerians, it is still a time bomb that will put the country in serious trouble if not properly handled.
The continuous quest for white collar jobs has turned the minds of many graduates away from embarking on entrepreneurial ventures which are capable of transforming them into employers of labour instead of job seekers.
The high rate of unemployment has played major defective roles in society.
Unemployment has increased the high rate of criminal activities, of such, is cybercrime. Cybercrime has been an avenue for people most especially youths to source for a means of livelihood. Unemployment has also reduced the size of the market, reduced the demand for goods and services; It has drastically reduced the payment of tax and the rate of infrastructural development in Nigeria.
In countries without unemployment or welfare benefits people eke out a living in vulnerable employment. In countries with well-developed safety nets workers can afford to wait for suitable or desirable jobs. But high and sustained unemployment indicates serious inefficiencies in resource allocation. Youth unemployment is an important policy issue for many economies.
But sadly, the government cannot possibly provide the whole number of employable youths in the country with job opportunities.
But, the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) said President Tinubu should focus on apprenticeship to tackle Nigeria’s rising unemployment rate and hardship.
Nigeria’s unemployment rate is 33.3 per cent, among the highest globally, according to the National Bureau of Statistics unemployment report in 2020. However, KPMG in April said Nigeria’s unemployment rate may reach 40.6 per cent in 2023.
Consequently, NECA’s Director-General, Mr Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde said the government must look beyond the usual to tackle the unemployment rate.
“With the rising rate of unemployment in the world and Nigeria facing a significant unemployment crisis, apprenticeship has been identified as a veritable means of tackling the scourge.
“It is no gainsaying that with over 35 per cent unemployment rate and a challenged economy like ours, the government must look beyond the usual to tackle the ticking time bomb,” he said.
He noted that the conversation on apprenticeship had gained prominence worldwide.
He said there was no better time for the government to address the country’s current challenge of rising unemployment with a deliberate apprenticeship policy.
According to the bureau of Nigeria Data Protection Bureau, “about 500,000 jobs are expected to be created through the training of Data Protection Officers and licensing of Data Protection Compliance Organisations to offer services to data controllers and processors.”
It noted that the new act is one of the strategic ways of meeting the campaign promise of Tinubu to create one million jobs in the digital economy sector.
The issue of unemployment has become a source of great worry. On the streets each day, you find a significant number of employable youths, most of whom have spent a number of years in the University all in the bid to acquire education. After graduation, there are no jobs to show for the years spent.
Being unemployed in Nigeria is a threat ravaging the populace. Almost everyone that is currently employed fear losing their means of livelihood or whatever they find meaningful and classify as work.
The politicians are not left behind too. They are afraid of not being able to perpetuate (guarantee their continuous employment with government) themselves in position of authority and affluence.
Also, technology has rendered many jobs redundant and new skills are needed in the workplace as well as the market space on a larger scale. The panacea is to create leverage for upskilling. The panacea is to retrain for higher productivity and create cross functional integration of work along many industries. We must learn a little bit of everything, but still develop new competencies to function in new work environment.
Nigeria, among other third-world States, is having more of the albatross than workable solutions. Yet, unemployment projections of agencies, including that of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), are grim and unsettling. But beyond another highfalutin policy by the government, it is high time Nigeria comprehensively reviewed the challenges and prospects of sustainable solution across all tiers of government. A headcount of the unemployed through the Agora policy is good, but not enough.
Unemployment figures have always been bad, and might have set out for the worst. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had recorded an increase in the national unemployment rate from 23.1 per cent in 2018 to 33.3 per cent in 2020, with youth unemployment of 42.5 per cent and youth underemployment of 21 per cent. The Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) in its 2023 Macroeconomic Outlook report, projected that the country’s unemployment rate would hit 37 per cent in 2023, while the country’s poverty headcount would also rise to 45 per cent.
Perhaps, in an attempt to develop a database of unemployed persons, the Federal Government, between April 17 and April 28, 2023, through the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) carried out a registration exercise of unemployed persons in the 20 local government areas of Lagos State. These statistics may have informed the view of Agora Policy, a Nigerian think-tank in its policy memo that described unemployment as “undesirably high.” And there is no doubt that this magnitude of unemployment, especially among the youths, is deplorable and it should warrant a national emergency.
But it is not a mystery that there are no new jobs, even as more people are underemployed. It should be expected in a country where infrastructure is grossly inadequate, government policy flip-flops meet official bureaucracies to kill businesses, hostile investment climate continues to shrink the real sector, and there is general business depression in the private sector. Quite unhelpful over the years are population growth, neglect of the agricultural sector, rural-urban migration drift, ethnicity, corruption, and dysfunctional educational system that created an army of unemployable graduate youths.
The government should concern itself with the promotion of policies and institutions that can improve opportunities and capabilities for Nigerians, while reducing vulnerabilities. There is a need for a coherent strategy that will lead to synergy between job growth and economic growth i.e. growth in labour-intensive sectors, which is job-led growth.
Government should play the role of enabler, facilitator, and regulator; helping the private sector grow, create jobs and generate wealth. Government should redirect its efforts to mainly providing a roadmap to productivity and basic services that will promote the enabling environment that would engineer growth in the real sector; and turning investment in infrastructure to employment creation.
Nigeria must be intentional in labour-intensive portions of the value chain to enhance export into global markets, by resolving broader macro-economic challenges that limit growth across the board. Government should target infrastructure spending in particular areas that increase the competitiveness of Nigeria’s exports, which includes electricity, transport, and telecommunications investments in export processing zones.
