Millions of Nigerians are jobless. We all know that an
unemployed population is a potentially rebellious army ready to enlist because
the idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Why are so many Nigerians in the job
queue? It is now apparent that the multitude of makeshift tokenistic official
programmes currently in place to tackle the frightening unemployment outlook at
all levels of government is just not working. Instead, it could be said, with
respect to the monumental joblessness now overwhelming the polity, that most of
the prescriptions so far on the ground are actually counter-productive, being
merely part of dubious outlets for siphoning government money into private
pockets all in the guise of “jobs creation. ”Nigerians are yearly inundated
with official promises, couched very much like political slogans, to end the
huge unemployment which has in turn generated an alarming level of poverty,
social instability and general insecurity for of which negative phenomena like
robberies, kidnapping, assassinations and incessant pseudo-sectarian violence
are the ultimate bye-products. If it is true that “there is dignity in labour”,
it must mean also that there is indignity in joblessness. Little doubt
therefore about the cause of the overall collapse in human values in
contemporary Nigeria. All over the world, there are varying degrees of
unemployment but what has made our case sadly unique is the fact that, whereas
governments elsewhere take the unemployment challenge of their societies as one
of the cardinal purposes for their existence, Nigerian governments, on the
other hand, do not yet see unemployment for what it is – a blight on
governance. It is true that Nigeria also has the peculiar demographic reality
of a huge population which naturally puts considerable strain on the limited
resources available. It is also correct to say, as China and other nations have
demonstrated that a large population is only a problem for societies that have
failed to construct their development agenda around their human resources.
Properly utilised, a large population is a natural productive capital, an
active catalyst for rapid economic development as well as a guaranteed
effective market for economic outputs. Unfortunately, governments in Nigeria,
past and present, have never seriously factored the actual job needs of the
people into their development plans or even during their routine budget making.
On the contrary, budgets have been influenced largely by selfish and hedonistic
considerations of individuals in power with little consideration for the
overall wellbeing of the population. Government projects or businesses, for
example, ought to be designed in such a way as to meet their specific
capacities to absorb a part of the labour force currently idling away. In other
words, no government project should be approved if there is no evidence of its
capacity to first utilise the abundant and wasting human resources within
Nigeria before any consideration is given for any expatriate participation or
undue automation. I concede however that there is also the shameful reality of
the gaping incompetence of most Nigerian “graduates” lately due to the poor
quality of education now available in the country. We must however wake up to
the fact that modern governments, being necessarily lean, are not expected to
be the main employers of labour. That is the exclusive preserve of the private
sector and, in this connection, small scale industries are the greatest
absorber of labour but, unfortunately, they are the worst victims of our
inordinate madness for the importation of anything consumable. Our unbridled
tastes for foreign products, especially among the elite of which government
officials are the principal culprits, have made it impossible for genuine local
entrepreneurship to thrive. For example, nearly all the local pharmaceutical
companies have abandoned production in preference for importation of every drug
including simple pain-killers and malaria medicines from far away India, China
and other places. Same for the textile industry and other once labour-intensive
businesses. The large-scale national infrastructural failure, worsened in
particular by a comatose power supply, has forced many former producers to now
become mass importers. All that NAFDAC does is to merely certify the chemistry
of these medicines regardless of their origins. From the earlier policy of
“import substitution”, we have gone regressive full circle into full
importation. That has meant the massive wipe out of most small and medium scale
industries which in a normal economy are the major employers of labour. This
has put undue strain on our foreign reserves and national investment capacity
as the thirst for the dollar has become uncontrollable.bToday every young
school-leaver is dreaming of going abroad for the proverbial greener pastures.
The alternative is to endure an inevitable joblessness in the country. Even the
Benin City — Arik — stowaway lad also had the escapist dream of “going to
America,” dead or alive. The only thriving sectors now are those who have
concentrated on the importation of just about anything under the sun – trading.
Another sector that has a semblance of boom is the emerging hedonistic
entertainment industry which, alongside miracle — preaching — religion outfits,
is really valueless in terms of economic productivity but serves as illusory
diversionary outlets for a troubled population — short-term sedative: “opium of
the masses.” It is a bad sign for any economy when, for example, warehouses,
bakeries and factories are been converted to places of worship as is the
current reality in all the defunct industrial estates across the country. It
has been estimated that about 70 per cent of employable Nigerians are
unemployed of which many of those who claim to be “self-employed” are actually
in disguised unemployment — fringe economic/criminal activities like touting,
fake pastors and juju men, street hawking, prostitution
and area boy-like deviant agencies cum middlemen. Needless to say that the
unemployment crisis will never be resolved by the tokenism of official schemes
like Sure-P and other temporary sinecure absorptions of practically duty-less
and no-task types of prestige engagements such as the ubiquitous political
aides/advisers because most of such employments are not intended to add value
to the economy but merely to assuage the gluttonous political patronage
machine. This country is blessed with human and material resources but sorely
cursed with politically-minded official economists who pontificate ‘ivy league’
theories but pratise with Ochanja market mentality: volume/turnover instead of
production. It has turned out to our collective chagrin that not much
progress has been made in the economy in spite of the bonanza that has come our
way through the abundant petrol-dollars that have poured into the nation’s
coffers over the years.
Source: http://www.punchng.com
No comments:
Post a Comment