By Sandra Ijeoma Okoye
There is no denying the fact that the dingy actuality confronting not a few Nigerian youths is the unending state of unemployment in which most find themselves. I wish I could state here that things will be looking up job-wise in the future for youths, but, based on the prevailing economic slowdown, both domestically and globally, this quandary will only get worse before it gets any better.
According to Statista, a leading provider of market and consumer data which has over 1,100 visionaries, experts and doers who are continuously reinventing it, thereby constantly developing successful new products and business models, “In 2022, the unemployment rate in Nigeria is estimated to reach 33 percent. This figure was projected to at 32.5 percent in the preceding year.
“Chronological data show that the unemployment rate in Nigeria rose constantly in the past years. In the fourth quarter of 2020, over 33 percent of the labor force was unemployed, according to the Nigerian methodology.”
Every year the universities and polytechnics owned by faith-based institutions, state governments and federal governments, churn out thousands of graduates, who studied in varying fields with the expectation that upon making the sacrifice of bettering themselves they would find a decent job, one that could support them as they move onto the next phase of life. This expectation could be a plausible reason why our unemployment rate is so high. Unfortunately, there is simply not enough decent jobs available for the youths who then have to sell themselves short, becoming overqualified and underpaid or alternatively lose hope and give up looking for work, or worst seek unlawful means to finance their ambitions.
Concerning unemployment problem in the country, experts have pointed out that to arrest the drifting situation in the country, four sectors of ‘interest’ to watch are: education, science and technology, agriculture and infrastructures. On the educational system in the country, analysts are of the view that the education policies of the 6-3-3-4 system are excellent in the policy statement, but the inability of the financiers to provide the teaching tools for its success has truncated its intended goal and objectives. However, to arrest the unemployment challenge, they added, entrepreneurial programmes should be integrated into the educational system from primary schools to universities, unanimously agreeing that courage and endurance are skills that should be taught by psychologists to students at all classes of our educational system.
Nigeria, they explained, has to increase drastically the number of her current Polytechnics, Colleges of Technology and Technical Colleges in relation to the in-explicable very large number of Universities and related Academies in Nigeria’s economy in order to clearly address the training and development of professional and technical skills for Technologies and Industrial goods production in Nigeria’s Economy.
It is important, in my view, that any country like Nigeria desirous of achieving sustainable development, must throw its weight behind agriculture by creating an enabling environment that will encourage youths to take to farming. First, separate from the worrying report that by 2050, global consumption of food and energy is expected to double as the world’s population and incomes grow, while climate change is expected to have an adverse effect on both crop yields and the number of arable acres, we are in dire need of solution to this problem because unemployment has diverse implications. Security-wise, a large unemployed youth population is a threat to the security of the few that are employed. Any transformation that does not have job creation at its main objective will not take us anywhere and the agricultural sector has that capacity to absorb the teeming unemployed youth in the country.
The second reason is that globally, there are dramatic shifts from agriculture in preference for a white-collar jobs; a trend that urgently needs to be reversed. In the United States of America, there exists a shift in the locations and occupations of urban consumers. In 1900, about 40 per cent of the total population was employed on the farm, and 60 per cent lived in rural areas. Today, the respective figures are only about one per cent and 20 per cent. Over the past half-century, the number of farms has fallen by a factor of three. As a result, the ratio of urban eaters to rural farmers has markedly risen, giving the food consumer a more prominent role in shaping the food and farming system. The changing dynamic has also played a role in public calls to reform federal policy to focus more on the consumer implications of the food supply chain.
Against the grim backdrop of unemployment starring us in the face by each passing academic dispensation, we ought to scratch our heads and ask ourselves why is it that we have a brain drain in Nigeria with a mass exodus of young brilliant minds leaving our shores and enriching others; well, from an economic perspective that seems to be the only way to address the unemployment equation. Wherever there is a need that is where the supply will go. So, we lose our labor force to emerging and developed countries, while Nigeria suffers from secular stagnation.
Without any iota of exaggeration, the only foreseeable remedy to our employment woes is for our decision-makers to put effective long-term mechanisms in place to foster economic growth. To be blunt, we need industries, we need Foreign Direct Investment; this primitive mantra of more farming is clearly not flying with the youths who have educated themselves along different criteria.
Rationalize the industries that we already have: we have cassavas, yams, and Sugar among other agro products in abundance and the world market is drying up. Against the foregoing backdrop, one is tempted to ask. “Why not push for ethanol production from sugar so as to diversify the sector, creating a need for more chemists and agronomists. Or are we going to wait until oil prices further surge again and we would be caught in a vortex? We need to lower the cost at which companies produce electricity so as to attract foreign businesses that should be paramount in the long- and short-term agenda. In the absence of doing the foregoing, how else can the current 33 per cent unemployment rate be brought down?
Although we are going through turbulent economic times, we should still be thinking of creating an enabling environment for sustained growth that will lead to the provision of decent jobs. That can only happen with long-term macro-economic planning.
