A ridiculous job creation testimonial

Elaborating on the policy, President Jonathan said that 2,500 entrepreneurs empowered by his administration had also created an average of nine jobs each, bringing the cumulative total of jobs created to a probable 22,000. He noted that entrepreneurs were the engine room of Nigeria’s economy and responsible for more than 60 per cent of Nigeria’s […]

Elaborating on the policy, President Jonathan said that 2,500 entrepreneurs empowered by his administration had also created an average of nine jobs each, bringing the cumulative total of jobs created to a probable 22,000. He noted that entrepreneurs were the engine room of Nigeria’s economy and responsible for more than 60 per cent of Nigeria’s $510bn gross domestic product, while Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) accounted for almost 98 per cent of the new jobs created in the economy on an annual basis.
President Jonathan said that the failure rate of the programme was less than 10 per cent, describing his administration’s job creation efforts as ‘impressive and beyond expectation’. He said his administration at inception identified unemployment among youths as one of the greatest challenges to deal with. This, he said, was the reason why the government took steps to tackle the problem. He said that his target at the time was to create not less than two million jobs annually.
If two million jobs was the target, it amounted to self-indictment that in the almost six years that he has been at the head of this administration, instead 12 million jobs that were expected to be created in the period, the president would be touting 5,400 jobs as achievement.  By his figures, it is clear that some state governments have done much better. For instance, the Ogun state Commissioner for Commerce and Industry Bimbo Ashiru announced this week that the state government created over 100,000 jobs through the Bank of Industry (BoI) Loan Scheme between November 2011 and December 2014.  
Besides, the 5,400 jobs figure cast serious doubts on the earlier claim made by the Minister of Finance, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in the fourth quarter of 2013 that government had created 1.6 million jobs under its Subsidy Re-Investment Programme (SURE-P) within 12 months. The inconsistency in the statistics says a lot about government’s perception of the crisis of unemployment in the country and its commitment to tackle it.
The government has done enough to create employment opportunities because of its inability to see gainful employment beyond the traditional concept of white-collar job, neglecting vast potentials in the agricultural sector, for example.  
One of the critical challenges of the economy is the growing unemployment level, especially among young school graduates. Statistics from various sources, including the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), indicate that the rate of unemployment in Nigeria is among the highest among developing economies, putting the current youth unemployment rate at about 25 per cent, with over 50 percent of youths in urban areas classified as unemployed. The large number of applicants drawn to the ill-fated Nigerian Immigration service (NIS) recruitment exercise in 2014 underscored the monumental crisis of youth joblessness in the country. It is estimated that about 2 million graduates enter the labour market annually.
Unemployment, particularly among youths, has its deleterious effects on the society. These manifest in various forms of anti-social activities and serious crimes.  
To address some of these shortcomings, skills acquisition prog-rammes should be emphasised in government’s job creation initiatives with a view to enhancing the likelihood of self employment among participants. Infrastructure such as stable electricity supply is also a basic requirement for the survival of SMEs.