How joblessness truncates dreams of Nigerian youths

If Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah 11 were a Nigerian, he wouldn’t have closed his eyes in sleep. He was quoted once as saying, “what keeps me up at night is poverty and unemployment.”
But in Nigeria, where over 40 million youths are jobless, there is absolute certainty that the likes of King Abdullah would never sleep, not even for a minute.

Surprisingly, King Abdullah is not the only one that would lose sleep when surrounded by ragtag armies of jobless youths. Even the federal government does not hide the fact that the nation’s unemployment rate has become a great source of concern.

Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was quoted as saying recently that the spate of unemployment was giving her sleepless nights. Citing the National Bureau of Statistics, the minister admitted that “each year, about 1.8m young Nigerians enter into our labour market and we need to ensure that the economy provides jobs for them.”

There is no hiding the fact that the nation is presently sitting on a landmine laid by millions of Nigerian youths, who live in social distress for lack of sustainable means of livelihood. The timing for its destructive explosion may not be predictable but the danger inevitably looms largely over the landscape. These able-bodied young men and women have become like a rudderless ship hit by a turbulent storm, merely drifting on harsh economic conditions towards an imminent disaster.

Their fears of a hopeless future were confirmed by the recent report by the National Population Commission (NPC) stating that the rate of unemployment in Nigeria rose from 21.1 per cent in 2010 to 23.9 per cent in 2011. In the latest report on its website, the NPC said the nation’s economic growth had not translated into job creation. This revelation implies that millions of Nigerian youths, including graduates, have no means of daily bread.

In its Economic Report on Nigeria released earlier in May 2013, the World Bank noted that “job creation in Nigeria has been inadequate to keep pace with the expanding working age population. The official unemployment rate had steadily increased from 12 per cent of the working age population in 2006 to 24 per cent in 2011. Preliminary indications are that this upward trend continued in 2012.”

In the official website, the NPC concurred. “Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics clearly illustrated the deep challenges in Nigeria’s labour market, where the nation’s rapid economic growth has not translated into effective job creation. The NBS estimates that Nigeria’s population grew by 3.2 per cent in 2011, from 159.3 million people in 2010 to 164.4 million in 2011, reflecting the rapid population growth. In 2011, Nigeria’s unemployment rose to 23.9 per cent compared with 21.1 per cent in 2010.”

It said the labour force swelled by 2.1 million to 67, 256, 090 people, with just 51, 224,115 persons employed, leaving 16,074,205 people without work. The NPC said the lack of sufficient jobs resulted in additional 2.1 million unemployed persons in 2011, up from 1.5 million unemployed people produced in 2010.
It added: “Unemployment was higher in the rural areas, at 25.6 per cent, than in the urban areas, where it was 17 per cent on average.

In the light of the country’s fast-growing population, efforts to create a conducive environment for job creation must be redoubled, if the trend of rising unemployment is to be reversed.”
To avert the wrath of jobless youths, the founder, Empower Nigeria Initiative and President, Anabel group, Nicholas Okoye, hosted the second Nigeria Leadership Summit at the Oriental Hotel, Lagos, with over 5000 youths in attendance. The summit dwelt on the theme, Let’s get to Work and was chaired by the former Secretary of the Commonwealth and current Chairman, Presidential Advisory Council on International Relations, Chief Emeka Anyaoku.

Okoye said the Empower Nigeria was about creating one million new jobs for the Nigerian youths over the next three years. He said the alarming unemployment rate in the country can only be solved by creating a direct alternative to active work engagement in which the Nigerian youth can provide a livelihood for themselves.

“It is about taking on the major challenges of entrepreneurship in Nigeria which we have identified to include funding, training and access to the business opportunities and ideas. Empower Nigeria is also about entrepreneurship networks that give entrepreneurs the chance to be a part of something big, expand their collective buying power and even use the network as a market place. It is about building a network of partners that will support the process of entrepreneurship across Nigeria,” he said.

The three-day event also had in attendance the former Head of the Interim National Government, Chief Ernest Shonekan, Minister of Culture, Tourism and National Orientation, Edem Duke, former Vice President, World Bank, Oby Ezekwesili, Managing Director, Bank of Industries, Evelyn Oputu, Managing Director, Heritage Bank, Ifie Sekibo, Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora, Abike Dabiri-Erewa and a host of other dignitaries.

Also, the Director General, Nigeria Economic Summit Group, Frank Nweke, Managing Director, Bank of Industry (BoI), Evelyn Oputu, Prof Pat Utomi, Adenike Ogunlesi, Prof Barth Nnaji, Alex Otti, Director General, National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Emeka Mba and lots of dignitaries were billed to make presentations at the summit.

Addressing the participants, Chief Anyaoku warned of the social consequences of unemployment among the teeming youths in the country. He said thousands of graduates are churned out annually into the overflowing pool of unemployed people, breeding frustration and restiveness among young people.

He recommended entrepreneurship as a viable solution to youth joblessness. He described the Empower Nigeria Initiative as a lifeline to youths, noting that its focus on entrepreneurship would address the nagging problem of youth unemployment and its associated vices. He urged the private sector to complement government’s effort in addressing critical areas.

While explaining the need for entrepreneurship, Anyaoku said youth unemployment has become one of the present challenges facing the country, with more graduates being churned out annually from the over 120 universities and tertiary institutions in the country.

Aside the social consequences of this high level of unemployment, Anyaoku said unemployment brought a debilitating frustration on the youthful population, breeding kidnappers, armed robbers and fraudsters. He described the summit as highly relevant to the country and expressed gladness that such a platform came at the right time to promote entrepreneurship among young people.

Anyaoku said the worrisome upsurge in crime in recent times could be blamed on the dearth of employment opportunities that would engage these young ones in rewarding ventures. He said although Nigeria faces lots of challenges, notably in security, infrastructure and tension in politics, youth unemployment remains a clog to economic development of the nation.

In her opening presentation entitled, Empowering the Nigerian Youth Population, Ezekwesili decried the failure of leadership, noting that the annals of Nigerian history have been blurred by a repeated cycle of failure.

Ezekwesili argued with facts that Nigeria was richer than China in the 60s, regretting that the reverse had become the case. She maintained that the noticeable poor quality outcomes in policies in the country were convincing signs of the absence of good governance.

“No nation is able to express its shared vision without leadership that understands sacrifice. As long as our political incentives are wrongly aligned, and the action of leadership is in itself a reward for work not done, to that extent, we do not have what everybody calls good governance,” she said.

Ezekwesili lamented poor policy choices and absence of strong institutions in Nigeria, saying they have robbed the country of the right platform to drive private investment and entrepreneurship.
While dissecting the numerous challenges facing economic development of the country, she said unemployment rate in Nigeria presently stood at 29 per cent, with 60 per cent of victims as youths. To worsen the situation, she lamented that an additional 2 million youths add to the pool of the unemployed population annually in African continent, spreading the tide of poverty to innumerable families.

Also speaking, the former Head of Interim National Government, Chief Ernest Shonekan, stressed the need to weed out corruption in order to win the confidence of foreign investors and create more employment opportunities for young people.

“Investors shun countries where there is corruption, more so because it increases the cost of doing business and also truncates the laws for doing business,”he said.

In his keynote address, Shokenan urged the government to harness the energies of existing entrepreneurs to fast track the development of the country. He further explained that political and economic stability are important for local and foreign investment.

Also speaking, Minister of Culture, Tourism and National Orientation, Edem Duke, who participated throughout the three-days programme, described unemployment as the “most significant challenge facing youth development in the country. The numbers of unemployed youths in Nigeria are alarming, and the figures are growing by the day.”

Duke called for a holistic solution in addressing the challenge, noting that mutual collaboration was vital between the private and public sectors to get millions of youths off the unemployment list.

“We know that jobs are created primarily in the private sector. And the role of the federal government is to provide the enabling environment and to support from the back all the initiatives and structures that the private sector can develop that will create an atmosphere of productivity, growth and job creation. It is for this reason that my ministry, as part of the federal government, supports the Nigeria Leadership Summit and this year’s summit. We need to get to work because there are millions of youths who depend on us to provide them with a guide and a path to salvation,” he said.

Duke said his ministry would work closely with the Anabel Group to identify areas in entertainment industry, the culture industry and the tourism sector, where youths can build micro, small and medium businesses and create sustainable business opportunities for thousands and millions of people over the long run.

The task of creating one million jobs within three years obviously seem daunting, but the convener of the summit, Okoye, is not eating his words. He would soon hit the road running with the message of entrepreneurship. According to him, organizing road shows on entrepreneurship, visiting all corners of the country to sign up young people, get them trained, certified and engaged in a productive venture would surely awaken these sleeping giants in their millions.

The SUN