Failure writ large is manifest in the latest labour figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics showing Nigeria’s unemployment rate rising higher to 23 per cent by the third quarter of this year. Belying the claims of the current and past governments to “achievements,” stark reality experienced by the majority presents poverty and joblessness with no sign on the horizon of positive change. President Muhammadu Buhari and his ministers should drop their delusory claims of success and immediately implement sensible policies to put Nigerians in productive toil.
While many are jobless and many more poor, official denial and fairy tale claims of success mix nauseatingly with the abject failure of the government to fashion and execute a national economic policy to shape the environment for investments and job creation. As the NBS figures emerged, for instance, the President was crowing that he had stimulated 12 million jobs in agriculture and his ministers, of executing “massive infrastructure” projects.
NBS figures exposed the hollowness of the bogus claims: the acceptable global measure of success for any economy – rich or emerging – is job creation. Unemployment jumped from 18.8 per cent in Q3 2017 to 23.1 per cent Q3 2018: whereas the number of economically active persons (those aged 15-64 years) had increased from 111.1 million in 2017 to 115.5 million in 2018, the labour force (those actually seeking jobs) rose from 85.1 million to 90.5 million. The number of persons with no work at all and those that worked for under 20 hours a week rose to 20.9 million persons in Q3 2018, up from 17.6 million in Q4 2017, an addition of 3.3 million to the jobless army. Of the total, 9.7 million did nothing at all. When combined with those classified as underemployed, those not gainfully employed in the economy stood at 43 per cent of the workforce. All that the government can show for its exertions is the addition of 200,000 jobs between Q3 2017 and Q3 2018, which placed alongside the 3.3 million additions to the labour market within the same period, translates to only six per cent of new job seekers securing employment.
When you inherit a broken economy and your major export earner – oil – is beset by falling prices, you need a vision; you must have a holistic, multi-pronged strategy, encompassing short, medium and long-term tactics. Success is headlined everywhere by job creation and export diversification while investment is the stimulator of both. In this, Buhari’s government has failed. Our peers in the BRICS grouping are better served by their leaders. Bold measures adopted after an economic crisis reduced Brazil’s jobless rate to 11.7 per cent in Q3 2017, the seventh consecutive quarterly decline; Russia’s was 4.8 per cent by November; India’s headline economic programme aims to create one million new jobs in three years and further reduce its 3.5 per cent jobless rate; while China’s stood at 3.82 per cent in October. The group’s laggard is South Africa, whose 27.5 per cent jobless rate is attributed by the Economist Pocket Book to disruptive transitional politics.
Nigeria’s case is not hopeless; it is our leaders that dim our collective hopes. There are immediate steps this government can take. One is privatisation of state-owned assets. The N1.5 billion that the NNPC spends on petrol subsidy daily and the estimated N3.7 trillion spent on refined oil imports every year would be better spent on critical infrastructure; the irrational refusal to sell the four loss-making refineries, 23 depots and pipelines robs the economy of foreign direct investment, productive activities and jobs.
No emerging economy can grow without FDI: according to the UNDP, it is critical to infrastructure, energy, water and to increase jobs, technical expertise and wages. Experience in the liberalisation of the telecoms sector in 2001 should guide Buhari to liberalise the rail sector, airports, seaports and tourism. The latest plan to pull down $1 billion from savings “to complete the Ajaokuta Steel plant” demonstrates our national folly; better to transparently sell it to top echelon foreign interests that can mobilise funds, expertise and ancillary sectors and thereby create thousands of jobs.
Reforming the broken power sector is critical too: Buhari and his Minister of Power, Babatunde Fashola, have been clueless in resolving the inherited mess; they should move today to leverage the state’s 40 per cent stake in the rudderless distribution companies to attract genuine foreign investors. The 5,000 megawatts available inhibits the economy by raising costs and squeezing out small businesses.
Simple policy moves to reduce or eliminate corruption-inducing bureaucracy like the executive orders introduced at the ports last year – but promptly sabotaged – will ease business operations and free the huge costs businesses incur for job-creating expansion.
Our states should stop existing only for sharing money and funding inefficient and corrupt bureaucracies. They should compete for investments and operate as autonomous economic units, the standard practice in federations. All policies at federal and state levels should be targeted at job creation and stimulating production by creating the enabling environment for investors to build their agriculture, mining and industrial sectors. Governments are not to directly employ; theirs is to provide a favourable jurisdiction for massive investment, job creation and exports.
There should be strong regulation in all sectors. Agencies like the Central Bank of Nigeria, NAFDAC, SON and Customs should be reformed, sanitised to eliminate corruption and driven by the latest technology.
The urgency of Nigeria’s situation is underscored by the 55.4 per cent youth (age 15-35) unemployment figure. Buhari should make a difference by a fast, honest and corruption-free liberalisation and privatisation programme. The federal and state governments should immediately implement emergency economic recovery plans with job creation as the overriding objective.
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