Jane Addams, a social worker and reformer, said: “Of all aspects of social misery nothing is so heartbreaking as unemployment.” Nigeria, just like some other countries, has been battling with the problem of unemployment, especially since the post-independence era, more than six decades ago. It is worthy of note that successive administrations both at the Federal and State levels have come up with various schemes aimed at finding a solution to the problem.
During the military era under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) was introduced in 1986 and the agency was saddled with the responsibility of designing and expanding the opportunities and rights of Nigerians in all the states of the federation. It was meant to promote job creation, stimulate entrepreneurship and the skills of representatives of various industries. In a nutshell, NDE was established to solve Nigeria’s unemployment challenge.
Under democracy, President Goodluck Jonathan came up with his own Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme SURE-P. Under this Programme was the Community Services Women and Youth Employment (CSWYE). The scheme was set up to provide temporary employment opportunities to the unemployed and unskilled women and youth.
President Muhammadu Buhari, in 2016, also set up the N-Power under the National Social Intervention Programme. The scheme with the theme “Empowering the Youths for Prosperity” is to tackle the issue of joblessness among youths as well as improve social development of young people in Nigeria.
Nigeria, no doubt, is one of the fastest growing economies in Africa or what is known as the “lion economy.” But unlike countries like Qatar, Cambodia or our neighbour Niger, with low unemployment rate, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report, “Nigeria’s unemployment rate rose from 27.1 percent in the second quarter of 2020 to 33 percent in 2022.” This is an indication that rather than reducing, the rate is increasing alarmingly.
Being a component part of Nigeria, Ogun State also faces the many challenges confronting the country, including unemployment. The governor, who is an ardent believer in the saying that “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop,” came up with life-transforming programmes that would translate into building a virile future not only for graduates but also for job seekers in various spheres of human endeavour.
At the inception of his administration, one of the steps taken was the opening of a job portal where graduates and non-graduates who are skilled in various trades register. The purpose of the programme, according to the governor, was to ascertain the number of those who are jobless as well as those who are underemployed with a view to matching the qualified ones with the employers of labour as well as exposing them to the various investors besieging the state. With this approach, thousands of employment opportunities have been secured for teeming youths.
Apart from this, the state government also set up an Artisans Scheme, under which people are trained in tailoring, hair dressing, painting and paint making, among others. The interesting part of this scheme is that participants are paid stipends on a monthly basis.
Also, the decision of the state government to convert one of the moribund model schools that dot the state’s landscape, to a TechHuB, was to make available a platform for Information Technology (IT) for the youths to showcase their talents. The hub also offers training opportunities to those who want to be well grounded in IT. The centre has in the last few years trained hundreds of youths who are now employed in companies across the country.
The TechHuB, is one of the many things the government is putting in place to turn Ogun State into what the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Prof. Ibrahim Pantami, said would be “Nigeria’s Silicon Valley” in the near future.
Another area which Ogun State has explored in generating employment for its teeming able-bodied men and women is the education sector. Barely a year ago, a scheme tagged “Ogunteach” was introduced and the method was to engage qualified interns for a period of two years as class teachers in public primary and secondary schools. At the end of their internship, those who excel are absorbed into the system. Though it was meant to fill the existing teaching gap in the public schools, it is also a platform for “young teachers” to be well groomed in the teaching profession.
On how his administration came about the scheme, Governor Abiodun said: “Around September last year, the Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, came to me with this brilliant idea. I immediately keyed into it and told him that it must be devoid of favouritism and that only the best should be encouraged.”
As at now, the scheme has so far provided employment to 2, 000 of the interns while additional 1,000 to 1,500 would be employed, according to the governor.
It is pertinent to state that the employment scheme is multi- dimensional and extends to other sectors. For instance, in the agricultural sector, apart from the Federal Government’s Anchor Borrower’s Programme, which the state government has successfully keyed into, another scheme for would-be graduate agric-prenuers, known as FADAMA GUYS, was also birthed with a view to widen the scope of engagement thereby boost food production. All these schemes are geared towards solving the problem of unemployment, especially in the agriculture sector.
Perhaps the man at the helm of affairs in Ogun State, in the course of putting ideas together on how to bring the rate of unemployment to the barest minimum, has come across the words of the former German Chancellor Gehard Schroeder who said, “any degree of unemployment worries me.” This has led to the interventions that are currently being used to address unemployment in the state.
From available data, Ogun State is definitely not the state with the highest rate of unemployment despite the fact that it is the education capital of the nation. With the unemployment rate in the country projected to reach around 53 percent in 2022 and 51percent in 2023, there seems to be no end in sight; but what is sure is that the various interventions by the Ogun State government would go a long way in reducing unemployment in the coming years.
- Udofia writes from Abeokuta, Ogun State