How governments create unemployment
Every government boasts of its employment generating intentions but only a few live up to the billing. From Local through State to the Federal level, there is no shortage of pontifications on employment creation but the reality is far from the dream. Indeed, there is a sense in which it can be argued that one […]
Every government boasts of its employment generating intentions but only a few live up to the billing. From Local through State to the Federal level, there is no shortage of pontifications on employment creation but the reality is far from the dream. Indeed, there is a sense in which it can be argued that one of the greatest obstacles to employment generation in Nigeria is government.
As soon as a local government chairman or state governor takes his oath of office, the first thing that comes to his mind is how to squeeze the people further under the guise of Internally Generated Revenue, IGR. Party thugs wearing reflective jackets are unleashed on the populace to collect one form of tax or the other. Usually accompanied by a policeman or two, they waylay you; in some cases they impound your vehicle or close down your shop or office.
If you are operating from a designated residential area and your business does not in any way disturb other residents, there is no attempt to offer a waiver in view of the economic recession; no thought is given to reaching a compromise. They descend on your premises with glee and order you to shut down. Send the staff home. Close shop. To hell with employment. Let the ranks of the unemployed swell. Government has spoken!
When you hear that the Obama administration has created 400,000 jobs in a particular month, you’d think the government has carried out massive recruitment. But no, government only tweaks its policies in favour of small businesses which employ five, ten or twenty people. The cumulative effect on the national scale is what is aggregated and credited to the administration. Small businesses such as our own ‘Mama Put’ joints are encouraged to expand. The more they thrive, the more they employ.
But what do we have here? As soon as a new local restaurant opens, government officials descend on the owner like vultures. They know the law, especially that aspect of the law that prevents you from making an honest living and employing fellow countrymen and women. If you can’t play ball by greasing their palms, they close you down. I have witnessed situations where owners of such restaurants are reduced to tears as so-called government officials literally plundered their joints in broad daylight. You would think they had committed some capital offence.
You can’t fight government. Not in these climes. The aggrieved lick their wounds and look for alternatives if they can find any. And you ask yourself, how come there is so much disconnect between governments’ pronouncements and their policies?
At the federal level, government spends billions of Naira to buy school books from publishers. But because government’s policy is in favour of importing finished books at zero duty, publishers simply jet off to India, Dubai, London or some Asian country to print their consignment and import for our children’s use. Nigeria has the most vibrant printing industry in Africa with billions of Naira invested in human capital and machinery.
But our printers are bypassed while we sustain an unpatriotic policy guaranteed to make people lose their jobs at home. Granted that the policy of taxing newsprint, printing ink, blankets, plates and other consumables used by the printing industry predates this administration, we have had more than 16 months to reverse the policy so as to ensure that all primary and secondary school books are printed locally, but we haven’t done so.
The printing industry is one sector where we have highly skilled manpower developed over the years. From the giants of the trade like Academy Press to the one-shop printers in Shomolu or Igbobi, or Ibadan, Kaduna, Port-Harcourt, Kano, Enugu, Benin or Area 10 in Abuja, you’d be looking at figures in excess of one million workers made up of artisans, jobbers, designers, engineers, computer operators, machine minders, visualisers, finishers , etc. When government’s policy makes the industry to sneeze because of lack of patronage, the workers catch the cold of unemployment.
We ought to be more creative. Away from white collar jobs, let’s go down the social ladder and see what can be done at that level to bring genuine change for the better. Why haven’t we standardised the contraption used by Suya, Booli, Kilishi and roasted corn vendors? What is so special about the trolley used by kebab and grilled chicken vendors in New York or the mobile tea and coffee shops-on-wheels in Johannesburg? Nothing. We could design ours and insist that the vendors comply with laid down standards. That way they can operate legally, pay their taxes and even employ others as their businesses expand.
We are not talking here of some highfalutin economic jargon but common sense. Not job for job sake as happened in some communist countries in those dark days when you were hired to dig a hole and fill it up again, just so you could earn something. Our people are ready to produce goods and services to earn a decent living. They just want governments to get off their backs so that they can excel.
According to Walter Block “We exist amidst economic scarcity and must work to live and prosper. That’s why we should be of good cheer only when we learn that this employment will produce things people actually value… And this is something that can only be done in the free market, not by bureaucrats and politicians.”
Meanwhile, Abuja recently witnessed a raid by AMAC officials backed by police going from office to office wielding chains and padlocks to seal up offices in private estates on account of “tenement rate” collection. The
National Assembly had to order a cessation of the madness. If you don’t employ people, government leaves you thoroughly alone, but open a business and they knock on your door and criminalise your enterprise. And I begin to wonder, is the falcon hearing the falconer at all?