Unemployment in Nigeria is a matter of concern as there is a large population of people without jobs in the country.How can the government and stakeholders bridge the gap? TOBA AGBOOLA asks.
Unemployment refers to a situation where a person actively searches for employment but cannot find it. It is a key measure of the health of the economy.
Recently, the International Labour Organisation’s World Employment and Social Outlook (WESO): Trends 2024 reported that joblessness and the jobs gap that have fallen below pre-pandemic levels have shown signs that global unemployment will rise in the year.
According to the ILO WESO, the first of its kind in 2024, “labour markets have shown surprising resilience despite deteriorating economic conditions, but recovery from the pandemic remains uneven as new vulnerabilities and multiple crises are eroding prospects for greater social justice”.
It projects that the labour market outlook and global unemployment will both worsen.
“In 2024, an extra two million workers are expected to be looking for jobs, raising the global unemployment rate from 5.1 per cent in 2023 to 5.2 per cent,’ it states.
In the same vein, the world leaders and governments are told to be more worried of the growing inequalities and stagnant productivity.
In Nigeria, unemployment has been a major challenge facing the country over the years.
Nigeria needs to create, at least, 3.6 million new jobs yearly to get unemployment down to five per cent by 2033, Agora Policy, a thinktank and non-profit organisation stated in a policy memo.
The latest data from the national Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows that the unemployment rate among youth increased to 7.2 per cent (from 6.9 per cent) in the second quarter of last year, while global consulting firm KPMG projected that Nigeria’s unemployment rate would rise further to 40.6 per cent (from 33.3per cent) in 2023/24.
The question is: What are the possible solutions to the crisis?
Experts pointed out that to arrest the drifting unemployment situation, five sectors of interest to watch are insecurity, education, science and technology, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs), agriculture and infrastructure.
President, Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), Dr. Tommy Okon said one major area that the government should pay attention to is insecurity. He said this would build the investor confidence.
Okon advised that the government should revisit the issue of state police, adding that this is very necessary.
“They have to control and tame insecurity to enable people to go into farming, both in small and mechanism farming where foods can be produced for export for foreign exchange earnings.
“Apart from this, it will build the investor confidence. This will help in job creation,” he said.
Okon suggested the re-organisation of Nigeria’s technical and non-academic learning protocols to improve specific skills in areas critical for improvements in the competitiveness of targeted sectors, this could tame rising unemployment.
He said: “There should also be a positive impact in managing the educational system. The education curriculum should be look into. There is need to rejig the system. Enough of white collar job.
“This could include trade schools aimed at providing necessary skills for particular sectors.This will encourage manufacturing.
Okon said the government should pay less attention to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, adding that the country is not yet ripe for their policies.
“The government should pay less attention to their policies.What can work out in foreign companies in terms of IMF and World Bank policies may not work out in our country.
“The Ministry of Science and Technology should also focus on our local manufacturing and see how to encourage them. The government must diversify the sectors to move from consumption to production,” Okon said.
Chief Executive Officer, Centre for the Promotion of Public Enterprise (CPPE), Dr Muda Yusuf, said the unemployment situation is quite scary and the implications are very frightening, adding that the job situation can only be as good as the state of the economy. It is economic activities that create jobs.
He said: “Therefore, the way out is to fix the economy. All classes of investors or prospective investors are critical to fixing the problem- small businesses, medium and large companies.
“But the most urgent that needs to be tackled are the macroeconomic issues, infrastructural bottlenecks and the security challenges.These are the first major steps necessary to be undertaken.
Yusuf said since the beginning of the insurgency in the Northeast, banditry in the Northwest and kidnapping in the Southeast and Southwest, many people in the agricultural sector have lost their jobs, as they can no longer go to their farms.
“So, tackling insecurity is a very key solution to the problem.The second is to look at the curriculum in our schools, especially in our tertiary institutions,” he said.
Yusuf claimed the school curriculum did not reflect the demands of society or that of the economy.
“We have a curriculum that has been put in place for 10-20 years; it is not likely to be relevant to the needs of today except for a few cases like medicine, pharmacy, and the rest of them. But even for those, the kind of methodology, equipment, and diagnosis that people used 10-15 years ago is not the same thing that they use now.
“Hence, getting the curriculum to be in alignment with the demands of the economy is also a very important factor,” he added.
The CPPE boss stressed the need to create an environment that would enable more SMEs to thrive, saying small businesses create more jobs than big businesses.
He explained: “If you have an environment where it is very difficult for small businesses to survive, where many of them are closing shops, they are also contributing to unemployment. To reverse that, we need to create an enabling environment for small businesses.”
He also noted that the government needed to put in place mechanisms that would address the challenges of high energy costs, high transportation costs, microeconomic problems, foreign exchange and credit facilities and strengthen their capacity to manage their businesses well because SMEs are very critical to job creation. They need more support than we are giving them.”
Agora Policy said Nigeria can solve its rising unemployment challenges by resolving broader macroeconomic challenges that limit growth across the board.
Recently, the Federal Government availed Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and the manufacturing sectors of N200 billion to create more job opportunities.
Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Nura Rimi, stated this in a message at a capacity building for MSMEs in the Northcentral held in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital.
