Sir: I laughed when I read the report by the multinational consulting firm KPMG, which projected Nigeria’s unemployment rate to hit 41 percent this year. But on second thoughts, I decided to write about it because of the impact this misinformation about the unemployment rate would have on the citizenry, and the nation’s image.
KPMG is a foreign organisation. In most technological and industrialised nations, the employment rate is determined by taxation. So, if 80 percent of the population pays taxes, it means that 80 percent of the population are employed.
In Nigeria, it is not so. There are millions of citizens who earn money and pay zero taxes. The people who pay taxes in Nigeria are mostly business owners, and public and private sector workers. Many who hustle are erroneously tagged as unemployed because they do not pay taxes to the government. In this category, we have freelancers, people who do remote jobs, content creators, and people using their talents and skills to profit in one form or another. Some of these individuals earn far more than people who do public and private sector jobs but because they do not pay taxes to the government, they will be tagged as unemployed.
Unemployment statistics by foreign organisations like KPMG tends to capture mostly individuals in the formal sector of the economy. What about the informal sector where billions of naira change hands daily? Market men and women, shop owners, mechanics, bus conductors, bus drivers, and agberos are examples of people operating in the informal sector who would otherwise be tagged as unemployed even though some of them earn so much money on a daily basis that enables them to live comfortably.
Nigeria’s problem is not unemployment but underemployment. Nigerians are creative, industrious, and hardworking people and it is impossible that millions of youths will sit down at home and fold their hands doing nothing. If this was the case, there would be social unrest as hunger would push many into the streets in protests. However, just because they are yet to get their dream jobs, or they are doing something totally at variance with what they studied in school, many will tag themselves as unemployed.
•Peter Ovie Akus,
New Jersey, USA.