Abuja’s Job Creation Initiatives And Rising Unemployment3 min read

Last week’s launching of the Nigeria Jubilee Fellows Programme designed to create job opportunities for 20,000 young graduates annually by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has again underscored the impact of such government social interventions in reducing the rate of unemployment in the country.

Considering the seemingly intractable nature of youth unemployment in the country and the need to tackle it headlong, such programmes and other previous interventions targeted at creating jobs and lifting people from poverty, would have ordinarily gone a long way in achieving that objective.

Speaking at the launch, President Buhari assured that the programme would offer the opportunity for mentors already engaged in various industries with relevant experience to support young Nigerians. According to him, the programme is a pathway for work experience in top tier organisations, providing relevant skills and the right network for the future in sectors like information and communication, financial services, trade, manufacturing, agriculture, and agro-processing.

For sure, youth unemployment has been on the upward trajectory for many years in Nigeria, given that a large army of young graduates is unleashed by the various tertiary institutions on the already saturated labour market yearly. With a population of well over 200 million, the youth constitutes 70 percent and counting. According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, NBS, the unemployment rate is put at a significant 33.3 percent, meaning that about 23.2 million Nigerians were jobless as of the fourth quarter of 2020 through December, from 27.1 percent in the second quarter of 2020, which is to say three of every 10 Nigerians within the working-age bracket are jobless. The situation is worse among those in the 15-34 age bracket, which rose from 34.9 percent in the 2020 second quarter, to 42.5 percent.

It is disheartening that as the Nigerian population is increasing, there is no proportionate economic development to creatively turn the number to an advantage. The golden rule on the matter is that an economy must grow at twice the rate of population for a nation to provide enough infrastructure for the new arrivals.

To be fair, this is not the first job creation programme that the Buhari administration would be targeting the youths. We recall the N75 billion National Youth Investment Fund (NYIF) as part of the N2.3 trillion economic sustainability plan to cushion the effects of COVID -19 pandemic on the most vulnerable Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) across Nigeria between 2020 and 2023.

There was also the Formalisation Support initiative which entails the Federal Government registering 250, 000 new businesses with the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC, at no cost. There had also been the General MSMEs grant of N50,000 to about 100,000 MSMEs, besides the government’s Guaranteed Offtake Stimulus, a scheme aimed at stimulating direct local production in the 36 states and the FCT. Available information shows that the N-Power programme engaged close to one million beneficiaries by the end of 2020; in addition to 10,000 youths who benefited under the N-TECH and N-AGRO initiatives.

Further checks reveal that about two million people have been empowered under the FARMERMONI, TRADERMONI and MARKETMONI. There had also been the Digital Youth Nigeria skill acquisition programmes especially in mobile service repair training with financial and technical assistance targeted at 100,000 youths.

Only recently, the Buhari administration claimed it has created 10 million direct and indirect jobs through the Anchor Borrowers Programme of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, through which 2.5 million smallholder farmers cultivated 3.2 million hectares of farmland, raising local production of rice, maize, cotton and cassava.

The president’s claim on job creation seemingly cast a slur on the NBS’ 33.3 percent unemployment figure. In numerical terms, the NBS unemployment data suggests that 23,187,389 able-bodied workers are jobless at the moment. Economy watchers contend that at the current rate, unemployment would surge to 39 percent by the end of 2021.

The rise in unemployment rate from 27.1 to 33.3 percent in one year incontrovertibly subjects the president’s claim of having created 10 million jobs to reasonable doubts. If the government had created 10 million jobs, unemployment would have dropped almost by 50 percent to less than 17 percent, bringing the actual number of jobless Nigerians to about 13 million from 23 million.

While not discountenancing the lofty and noble objectives of the various socioeconomic interventions initiated by the government to address youth unemployment, we are worried that rather than a significant drop, the figure is surging despite these interventions which have reportedly gulped about N500 billion. We are grievously distressed by this paradox. Moreover, the facts on ground indicate otherwise.

Source: https://independent.ng