Where are the 1.6 million jobs?

those ones can claim anything and should not divert our attention. However, when ministers, leading politicians and their spokespersons talk, we must hold them responsible as to the veracity of their utterances.Nigeria’s economy has been growing impressively along with chronic joblessness, debilitating poverty and massive inequalities. The youth especially are the worst hit, increasingly becoming […]

those ones can claim anything and should not divert our attention. However, when ministers, leading politicians and their spokespersons talk, we must hold them responsible as to the veracity of their utterances.
Nigeria’s economy has been growing impressively along with chronic joblessness, debilitating poverty and massive inequalities. The youth especially are the worst hit, increasingly becoming a part of what Aljazeera dubbed “Generation Jobless”. Of recent, however, we are being told that, as a result of the “transformation agenda” of President Jonathan, things are changing for the better. The administration even came up with 1.6 million as the number of jobs created last year alone.
Let us first look at the dire statistics in context. Unemployment was officially about 12 percent of the working population in 2006.
Since President Jonathan assumed office as Nigeria’s substantive president on May 6, 2010, a day after the death of his predecessor and former boss, Umaru Yar’Adua; and all this time since his re-election in 2011, unemployment has continued to worsen. From about 21.1 percent in 2010, it rose to 23.9 in 2011, and has risen to about 30 percent currently by most estimates. More disturbing, youth unemployment rose to 54 percent in 2012 and is still seemingly uncontrollable. Citing figures from National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) the Minister of Finance, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said, last December, that no fewer than 5.3 million youths were jobless in the country, while 1.8 million graduates enter the labour market every year. It is in this context that we should look at the claim being made on recent jobs creation.
Mrs Okonjo-Iweala, who is also the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, started it in December 2013 and the president repeated it in his New Year’s Message. The official position is that the Federal Government has created 1.6 million jobs in 2013, and plans to add another 2 million of such jobs this year.
There are two problems with this official claim; no one can say specifically where these jobs are, and even if true the approach hardly scratches the surface.
The federal govern-ment has been silent on requests by a youth development and advocacy groups, media houses and others seeking to verify the number of jobs it said it created between 2011 and 2013. The blanket response by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Office of the Chief Economic Adviser to the President and other agencies, simply referred these groups to the National Bureau of Statistics. For almost six months now, that office has not bothered to reply despite the provision of the law (Freedom of Information Act, 2011) that it should reply “within 7 days of the receipt of the application.”  
During the recently televised Media Chat, the president insisted that 1.6 million jobs were indeed created in 2013, mentioning Agriculture, Nollywood, Sure-P, YouWin and others as areas where these jobs were created, but could not come up with specifics. He too insisted that the National Bureau of Statistics has the details adding, ‘I have asked them to publish it (sic)’.
It is time for the NBS to enlighten us on these (otherwise it may incur the wrath of the First Lady for we shall continue to demand for them even if it gives her husband sleepless nights).
But we must come back to the adequacy of the strategy. With about every one out of four Nigerians of working age currently seeking employment, how long would it be before we can even put a dent on this reality of persistent joblessness? Even by its own figures 1.8 million new graduates are joining the job market. How can we address this with about 1.6 to 2 million in Nollywood, Sure-P and similar tokenisms?
The hope on offer is that the atmosphere conducive enough is being put in place that would, in the long-run, create sufficient jobs. Combined with electricity and infrastructure improvement, this would spur the private sector into creating more jobs, especially, we are repeatedly told, in the informal sectors of the economy. On the flip-side we have to take into account the time lag inherent in this approach, the recent experiences of other countries face similar situations and the fact that the leading sectors of our economy seem clearly labour-saving. Also, are our foreign trade policies, tax regimes, education and even interest rates conducive to local job creation? These and other issues we hope to take on next week because a jobless, non-inclusive growth is not sustainable.

A silver lining in the Chibok saga?

As I write these few words it was with some sort of relief that the media outlets are releasing a clip of the kidnapped girls held captive by Boko Haram giving us all hope that we can hope to see them regain their freedom soon, depressing as it surely must still be. The initial rumour that they had been sold off or forced into marriage was apparently wrong and we must thank God for that. They must be brought back whatever it takes.
Hopefully Dame Jonathan, Asari Dokubo, Kema Chikwe and their clan of doubters may still continue with their fiction because there is no cure for that type of crude political opportunism.
We must not cease our public protests demanding for effective government actions on the rescue of these girls, for that is our right under a democracy. We must also remember that the fight is just starting for our children’s right to education and freedom from fear and inhumanity.
All the security and law enforcement officers currently trying to enforce illegal and undemocratic directives must be made to realise they may have to account for their illegality. Obeying illegal directives is a crime even if the orders come “from above.”