Recruiting in China

Quoting a report by the National Bureau of Statistics last month, the Minister of Youth Development, Akinlabi Olasunkanmi, said more that 80 per cent of Nigerian youths are jobless. The minister further disclosed that 10 per cent of the 20 per cent that are on paid jobs are underemployed. The report, he said, claims that only about 10 per cent of Nigerian university and other tertiary institution graduates get paid job yearly.

Olasunkanmi, who identified the implications of this dreadful development as prostitution, cult activities, armed robbery, drug and child trafficking and hostage-taking, said as a panacea to the problem, his ministry had initiated the entrepreneurship scheme to create jobs for the youths.

While the revelations are a mere confirmation of the nation’s situation and worries, the minister’s solution is weak and inappropriate.

It is common knowledge that the country’s artisans have been forced to abandon their trades to become Okada riders as a result of the chaos in the power sector. It is therefore strange that the minister’s solution is to train entrepreneurs when the business climate is still hostile to all forms of wealth creation. All such direct government interventions in job creation have never worked.

The problem of unemployment is largely caused by a comatose power sector. Prohibitive cost of doing business occasioned by decrepit infrastructure and unstable policy environment has led to the collapse of many small and medium scale businesses, thereby rendering the youths jobless. The shrinking real sector is also at the root of the mass exodus of Nigerian youths in search of greener pasture in other lands.

Unfortunately, some of them, in their desperate search for jobs outside the nation’s shores, have perished while scores of others are serving varying jail terms all over the world. Recently, scores of Nigerian youths reportedly perished off the coast of Spain. The rising crime rate in the country is also a direct consequence of mass unemployment.

The present administration should avoid voting huge sums of money for poverty alleviation schemes or skill training programmes. Such funds have always gone into wrong pockets. The N10bn voted by the Obasanjo administration in 2000 to prosecute a Poverty Alleviation Programme was frittered. The unemployment situation is where it is today because past employment schemes by government failed dismally.

The singular role of government in employment generation is to create a conducive environment for the private sector to flourish. To foster a business-friendly climate, the power sector should be fixed. Millions of barbers, welders, cold drink sellers and other small scale business operators will go back to work as soon as there is a stable supply of electricity. The economy will automatically attract human and economic capital from all over the world when the power supply crisis is solved. It is generally reckoned that fixing the power sector may reduce unemployment by up to 50 per cent.

To rehabilitate the nation’s infrastructure, the government at all levels should embark on different public-private sector partnership schemes. To fix the rail system, for instance, the various laws that put the rail system at the behest of the Federal Government should be repealed.

Since mass unemployment is a direct consequence of the nation’s undue reliance on imports, all government policies should now be targeted at creating an export-oriented economy. China, India and many Asian nations have created millions of jobs at home by producing goods and services which are exported at globally competitive rates.