Addressing Youth Employment in Nigeria

By Preye Damb
preyedambo@yahoo.com

Unemployment has been a major problem of most developing countries. The International Labour Organization has defined unemployment as a situation where a large number of economically active populations are not employed, but are available and seeking for jobs. These include people who have lost their jobs and those who have voluntarily retired.

For many decades Nigeria was perceived as one of the richest countries in Africa due to her petroleum resources and her large population but in the 1980s, the country’s economy turned for the worse as world petroleum prices stumbled which influenced currency devaluation and corruption became so rampant while the population grew astronomically without concrete investment in the productive sector. Since that oil gloom period after oil boom, the level of unemployment in the country continues to rise.

The pathetic situation on the unemployment is as a result of the inability to develop and manage the nation’s resources affectively and efficiently by channeling them to profitable investments that could bring about maximum economic benefits to the citizenry.

As it is widely believed that urban migration, when people move from rural areas to the cities for white-collar jobs, is one of the factors of unemployment, maladministration too contribute to the level of joblessness of our teeming youths. Other negative vices that contribute to the situation include extravagant expenditures, kleptomaniac tendencies of public officers, gross mismanagement of resources and unfavorable policies of various administrations in the country.

It is uncommon to find families where the greater percentage of the youths including graduates are jobless, not because they are not qualified but the jobs are not just available. A slogan has come to stay which is, you must know the right person that know somebody for a job. It is more worrisome that as more graduates are churned-out yearly into the labour market to search for non-existing jobs, the ultimate alternative are also distressing to livelihood.

To some extent poverty is aggravated by unemployment which further leads to the high rate of crimes in our society like engagements of mostly youths in oil bunkering, yahoo- yahoo, armed robbery, kidnapping, drug addiction and trafficking. The females also while struggling to provide for the household without jobs, become depressed and resort to ugly trading in prostitution.

All these could be seen major problems of the rising level of social disorder and insecurity in the nation which tend to reduce the social status and self esteem of a person in particular and the country in general.

Though unemployment has been an issue of great concern to the government, there are organizations that are charged with the responsibilities of addressing the problem most especially the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) which was purposely established to design and implement programmes to combat unemployment in Nigeria.

In tackling this problem governments at all level should dedicate chunks of their annual budgetary allocation to productive sector and provide enabling environment for investors and other entrepreneurs to come in for the purpose of job creations. In fact the Niger Delta region where there are youth crises due to unemployment, with huge federal allocation to the oil producing states, youth empowerment should be the priority through well funded skill acquisition and job placement in the communities.

The government should also think of improving other sectors like agriculture and other natural resources to absorb the teeming population instead of focusing on crude oil. All efforts should be geared towards developing and managing what we have, and avoid external borrowing, especially as our External Reserves is pushing up words.

In an effort to encourage self-employment, government either through Public Private Partnership should invest heavily in the improvement of basic amenities like power, pipe born water and road networks.

Nigeria as a nation has the capacity to overcome unemployment problem if there is collaboration between the public and private sectors in creating enabling environment for job opportunities. All through greater employment opportunities that the masses can be engaged in nation building and imbibe in them the spirit of patroticism and solidarity.

Only through rapid employment generation the link between economic growth and aggregate poverty reduction can be strengthened for the benefit of the people.

Nigeria can only be seen as truly a giant of Africa if it overcomes the challenges of youths’ employment through empowerment.

Preye Dambo

National Press Centre

Abuja

Robot  Villager

# 1 ...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 21.10.2008 04:10