Neo-Labour exchange

Editorial

Lagos State Commissioner for Wealth Creation and Employment, Yetunde Arobieke, has just announced a portal of job seekers, numbering over 60, 000.  That data base, from five registration centres state-wide, is replete with skills of each of the registered, with the aim of linking the youths up with investors and business owners, who might need their skills.

Those centres are a replica of old Labour exchanges.  The only difference is, apart from its digital form, that the job seekers are more likely to be linked to a slew of small and medium-scale businesses hiring fresh skills, than to big government or the giant private-sector companies of old.  That would appear the new face of job opportunities, with the hefty de-industrialisation of the post-structural adjustment programme (SAP) years, from 1986.

Indeed, Mrs. Arobieke, speaking at the flag-off of an Information Technology empowerment and employability programme, hinted at the bias of the new scheme — IT — aside from disclosing her ministry’s efforts in other areas: upgrading skills, aiding youths to access the labour market and combating long-term unemployment.

Around the same time, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was announcing a new initiative, to partner tertiary institutions, to provide start-up capitals for graduates with sellable and bankable business plans.  All the beneficiaries would need, as collateral, is their degree/diploma certificates.

“The scheme is designed to support the development of entrepreneurial mindsets and culture,” Godwin Emefiele, CBN governor, speaking through Dr. Adebowale O. Idowu, the CBN Director of Development Finance, declared, “through the introduction of a platform that provides seamless access to affordable finance to graduates, through innovative channels for participation.”

The new scheme is named Tertiary Institutions Entrepreneurship Scheme (TIES); and it’s obviously right thinking that it is all tied to tertiary institutions’ ability to produce entrepreneurially sound minds, even if young, who think more of how to invest and create jobs, and less about how to seek for jobs.

The CBN governor spoke to a conclave of vice-chancellors, at the 35th Conference of the Association of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (AVCNU), held at the University of Science and Technology, Wudil, Kano.

Incidentally, the CBN governor mentioned how micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are pivotal to the new initiative: “MSMEs,” he declared, “portend great opportunities for addressing these gaps and accelerating the economic growth, leveraging our vibrant youth population.”  That neatly ties up with the direction of the Lagos neo-Labour exchange — linking skilled labour with micro, small and medium-scale businesses.

These are admirable moves — particularly the stark realisation that the future of gainful employment points to small businesses, rather than giant enterprises.  Indeed, the structure of most modern economies reflects the collective strength of MSMEs, scattered all over the economy, rather than the few big players, or even multinationals. It’s a pressing restructuring of the economy, that may well pave the way to sustainable growth.

However, the formula won’t work except tertiary institutions give entrepreneurship a special focus, building it as an integral part of the curriculum, no matter the course of study — from the Arts and Humanities, to the Social Sciences, Business Sciences, the physical sciences, and right to the classical professional studies as Law, Medicine, Engineering, Architecture and the like.

It’s good the CBN boss sold the idea to vice-chancellors, who can design requisite programmes that lead to healthy inter-university competition, in producing fresh graduates that can access the CBN start-up capital; more so when qualification for it ranges from one month out of university, to five years after graduation.  But the CBN also needs to consider another round of pitching to polytechnic and monotechnic administrators.

But above all, the focus on skills, rather than over-reliance on certificates, should be addressed anew.  The 6-3-3-4 system was conceived to make education more functional.  But along the line, that initiative missed the train to its goal.  It’s therefore high time to re-tweak it.  That would create a sound basis for the entrepreneurship the CBN plans to do from the roof.

No economy loses by its quantum of university graduates, of lawyers, of doctors, of architects, of engineers, and of sundry intellectuals.  But then, no economy gains by lack of practical skills  — mechanics, chefs, tailors, electricians, masons and builders, house painters, even vulcanisers.

To correct its job challenge, Nigeria must strike a balance between the two.