Millions out of job: Unemployment at ‘boiling up’

Today,  one of the major threats to Nigeria’s economic and social stability is the army of unemployed  and underemployed  people, especially youths,  roaming  its  cities and villages.  Such  persons, no doubt,  constitute huge security risk to the  society,  as they are willing tools for  mischief-makers  and of great concern as indeed it can be likened to a volcano on the verge eruption.

Already, the impact of high unemployment rate  is manifest  in the  upsurge  of  various forms of criminal activities across the country from petty stealing to  armed robbery, kidnapping, pipeline vandalism,  illegal  oil bunkering, and even the extreme cases of  insurgency. All of these have their direct or indirect roots in the employment crisis because as the  local  saying goes, ‘an idle hand is the devil’s workshop’. A drive through the nooks and crannies of  most Nigerian cities, towns and even villages reveals a startling  confirmation of  how millions of able-bodied youths roam the streets idling away the productive  period  of their lives.  Nigeria’s employment crisis has been further aggravated by the activities of  insurgents in the North-Eastern  where the Boko Haram terrorist group has sacked millions of residents from their homes, jobs and other  gainful  activities. Similarly, activities of militants in the Niger Delta  have also forced many oil companies to  either scale down operations,  relocate or close shop  leading  to mass retrenchment of workers.  The same  has been recorded in the manufacturing and banking sectors thereby further aggravating an already bad situation.  Even the government’s  policy of Treasury Single Account, TSA, has  been said to have further dialled up unemployment level with a record of over 5,000 job losses in the financial sector. The  National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)   reported that  the national  unemployment rate  increased to 12.1percent in the  first quarter of 2016 from 10.4percent in the last quarter of 2015 while underemployment rate  grew to 19.1percent in the  first quarter of 2016 from 18.7percent in the last quarter of 2015. Just recently,  the President of Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria,  ASCSN, Mr. Bobboi Kaigama, whilst   speaking at the body’s National Delegates Conference, in Abeokuta, Ogun State, lamented the rising unemployment rate in Nigeria and its dangers to national development. Kaigama, who is also the President of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, said: “We believe that Nigeria is presently at a boiling point as far as the rate of joblessness is concerned and urgent measures need to be taken to arrest this ugly trend”.    He corroborated  the reality of the impact of the situation to the sanctity of the nation’s socio-economic  being and called for the  government to set out goals  for  its employment creation agenda alongside economic overhaul of the country for  more competitiveness, investment attraction  and access to finance  amongst others.  The hues, cries and lamentation is endless and with the  panacea to the unemployment crisis seeming inexhaustible, how then  can Nigeria overcome its unemployment crisis  recognizing the fact that no  country in the world   has   totally resolved  its unemployment problem.  The best  is to keep it within the lower single digit figures  by creating an economy that offers employment opportunities. Research The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management, Nigeria  (CIPM Nigeria),  as the  regulatory body for human resource management practice  in the country,  recently conducted a research titled “Management of National Unemployment Challenges in Nigeria” in a bid to further understand  and proffer solutions to  unemployment  situation  in the country.  Expectedly, the research report  gives  clear pointers to the  prevailing  causes of the  current situation and solutions to it. According to the report,  the causes are quite a number, the top being inconsisted government policy  rated an average of 4.56 on a scale of 5. The report called   for a critical analysis of the  applicability and sustainability of public policies before  and whilstformulation as it seems  the nation has a history of  sustainable  public policy  application  challenge. Another causes of the high rate of unemployment in Nigeria, according to the report, is poor political governance and  policy direction. This is said to  have strongly tied with  harsh  operating business  environment which factually informs the short-lived  nature of businesses  and  render  employees jobless. The report  highlights  the lack of  stakeholder (public &private sector)  ownable  national employment policy with an average rating of 4.23 on a scale of 5.  According to the report, this may not be totally inseparable from inconsistent government policy.  Indeed,  should  all  parties jointly own an actionable  national employment policy, there would  be strongly harnessed ideologies and a united front  with all parties  singing  from the same page. Panacea The panacea to the unemployment crisis is  inexhaustible. Besides the  issues and causes  as highlighted by  CIPM  Nigeria  through the research report, some of thefollowing suggestions  could also  contribute to minimising the current level  of unemployment to avert possible human and economic crisis: Ease of Doing Business: Consideration must be given to  creating  conducive environment  for  a thriving  private sector  to enable job creation owing to the obvious fact the  government alone  can not  be burdened with such responsibility especially in the face  of its rapidly  shrinking capacity for such.  The provision of critical infrastructure  such as good road network, stable power supply and security of lives and properties endears thriving  business just  as  progressive taxation policy and where necessary,  encourages investment and  investors. One sector that has the capacity to create mass employment is the agricultural sector.  As such  massive investment in agriculture is needed to lure youths to that sector for the production of food and raw materials needed for industrial survival and growth. One  can recall with nostalgia the Groundnut pyramid, Cotton, Millet from the North, Cocoa from the West,  Palm  oil and Palm produces from the South-East and South-South before the discovery of crude oil in commercial quantity. These farm produces provided the needed raw materials for most of the nation’s industrial sector. The textile industry alone employed over 500,000 direct jobs before 1997.  This can be repeated  perhaps with the government’s currently launched  initiative “Green  Alternate” aimed at providing a roadmap for the nation’s agricultural sector.  Speaking at the  launch  recently held in Abuja, Mr. Audu Ogbeh, Honourable Minister of agriculture  stated that “100,000 extension workers will be recruited for the sector” an encouraging statistics in spinning off more opportunities for job creation. Social dialogue The importance of social dialogue amongst  government, private sector employers,  relevant professional bodies  and union leaders at all levels, from policy design to implementation and the measurement of results should be a matter of state policy. Workers and employers’ organisations should actively participate in social dialogue at the enterprise, sectoral and national levels to assess opportunities and resolve challenges posed. Also, there should be dialogue and continuous dialogue among government, employers and administrators of the nation’s institutions of higher learning to ensure that products of such institutions match the needs of employers. In other words, the dialogue should be centred on ensuring that graduates of the nation’s tertiary institutions have the right skills required by employers of labour so that the issue of employability is drastically minimised if  not completely  eradicated.  This should perhaps start with the process of assessing and redesigning the curricula of the nation’s higher institutions of  learning. Keen consideration for employment impacting policy formulation  should be paramount. All socio-economic  policies should not only be job- friendly, but also  job creation oriented. That is, every economic action and reaction of government should have  creating  sustainable jobs as a focal point.  The  success  metrics  of  any  action,  should be  determined  by the number of sustainable jobs  created. For example, the moves  to reconstruct the north eastern part of Nigeria’s  success of the reconstruction  efforts  should be determined by the number of sustainable jobs created at the end of the day. It should not just be aimed at returning displaced persons back to their homes, but should ensure that displaced farmers, fishermen, factory workers and others return to their normal lives and those who hitherto were not engaged in productive activities are meaningfully engaged. One of the major problems of the last administration’s amnesty programme was its failure to be job creation centred. If it were sustainable job creation centred, the ex-militants would have been seamlessly integrated into the society as fully employed boys and girls instead of depending on  an unsustainable trend of  monthly allowance. The urgent call for the  support  of Small  and Medium scale  Enterprises and Businesses  becomes also imperative for review  because viable SMEs are the greatest impetus to jobs creation as  recorded  in the Asian tigers where cottage industries have continued to play major roles in the growth of their economies. This  support can be in form of  start up funds or capital needs  to drive their businesses. There should be social protection to improve resilience and safeguard SMEs against the impact of socio-economic and even environmental shocks. Social policy measures should be integrated into national responses to socio-economic and environmental changes. Employment-guarantee schemes such as bailouts can help in many ways such as  job  creation and even sustaining existing jobs. This can help employers and workers cope with changing labour market demands. It could also aid workers to either retool, or acquire the type of skills needed to improve the chances to keep or get new jobs. Agencies like the National Directorate of Employment, NDE, Industrial Training Fund, ITF, should be well funded and ensured that they are not open to political manipulation. Ad hoc policies such as the now rested Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme, SURE-P, for empowering political loyalists should be discouraged. Local content Above, all efforts should be put in place to revise the current trend where almost everything including toothpick is imported. There should be a law forcing public officials at the three tiers of government to patronise locally made goods at all public functions and establishments, with severe sanctions for contravention of such a law. In other words, local manufacturing should be the priority of the government. Local content law should be applicable in all sectors of the economy to arrest the current trend just as the  law on expatriates’ quota should be enforced  to curb the situation where foreigners have taken  over jobs  ideally  meant for Nigerians. Finally, importation of finished goods, from petroleum products, clothes, consumables and so on should be discouraged. What unrestricted and unregulated importation does is to export jobs to the country of importation and import unemployment to the importing. One typical example in this regard is the continued exportation of the nation’s crude oil and the  near 100percent importation of refined petroleum products. A locally driven petroleum sector with value addition that utilises all the by-products of crude oil is a mega employer of labour. With the aforementioned,  it only becomes clearer that the  failure to tame  the upsurge in unemployment no doubt  portends  huge  danger  to  our social and economic well survival hence all hands must be on deck to address the issue and avert a crisis.  This for sure must account for CIPM’s recent commitment and  renewed vigour  at  various levels of  stakeholder engagement  for  adopting well grounded and rounded recommendations into  policy adoption in line with the intended agenda of the current administration  on  job creation  and  employment.