Youth unemployment has remained a major issue for decades in Nigeria and it is not abating. On the contrary, it is becoming a monumental problem both for governments and families. A prominent traditional ruler, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, the Ooni of Ife, recently highlighted the potential danger youth unemployment constitutes to the nation when he asserted that it is “a time bomb waiting to explode” if urgent measures were not taken to salvage the situation.
The traditional ruler’s concern is, according to him, underscored by the increasing resort to violent criminality by the largely unemployed youth. Violent extremism, mostly perpetrated by youth, is a nightmare that we live with today. While unemployment is a phenomenon prevalent in virtually all countries, though at low levels in many, the rate of youth unemployment in Nigeria, variously put at between 50 percent and 61 percent , is among the highest in the world. This gives cause for grave concern considering the youth population is the most vibrant, energetic and productive segment of any national population.
The Nigerian National Youth Policy (2009) document defines youth as those between the ages 18 and 35 as against the global trend of age 15 to 34. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the Nigerian youth population is put at 61.3 million or 31.7 percent of the total population estimated at 190.6 million as at July 2017. Of this number 61.6 percent are unemployed while 58.1 percent of youth who are working are underemployed. The NBS data showed that 7.9 million youths lost their jobs in the fourth quarter of 2016, made up of 2.9 million graduates and 5 million semi-skilled workers. In just a three-month period, October to December 2016.
Successive governments have tackled the issue of youth unemployment, to the best of their abilities, but current situation of enduring high youth unemployment rate, shows that their best efforts have not been enough. We say many of the programmes to stem youth unemployment over the decades have been largely hare-brained and not well thought out.
These amount to episodic, situational responses lacking a holistic understanding of the fundamentals which continue to fuel youth unemployment. There was the Operation Feed Nation of the regime of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo in the late 1970s, President Shehu Shagari’s Green Revolution of the early 1980s, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s Directorate of Food, Road and Rural Infrastructure (DIFRRI) of the mid to late 1980s.
Various other programmes to alleviate youth unemployment and reduce poverty include the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) National Accelerated Poverty Reduction Programme (NAPEP) to recent projects like Vocational Training Scheme (VTS) N-Power and Subsidy Reinvestment Empowerment Programme (SURE –P) At the state level, various government s adopted varying strategies to address youth unemployment including direct cash payment for those engaged in environmental cleanliness.
So far, most of these efforts have been, at best, palliatives which have not addressed the core issues involved in youth unemployment.
These core issues include the warped value system of the political class where there are too many grandiose, white elephant projects with limited impact on job creation, and with public funds frittered away. Another issue is lack proper articulation of the mix of youth training in terms of those for academic learning and those for vocational/technical training. The result has been a woeful mismatch where too many youths are trained in tertiary institutions in the social and pure sciences as against technology-related courses.
The absurdity of the education policy is most manifest in cases of Polytechnics with mandate to train middle level technical personnel which ended up having more students registered in social science courses. The same apply to universities of technology which ape the curricula of the mainstream, orthodox universities. Admissions to universities and technical colleges should be aligned to projected national needs, not just uncontrolled number.
We have situations of unemployable graduates, which fuels statistical unemployment. This calls for closer collaboration between industry and tertiary institutions such that tertiary institution products are industry-ready at graduation. We commend government’s new policy thrust that encourages vocational subjects in secondary schools and vocational training of National Youth Service Corps members.
This should be matched with adequate facilities. Also, we call for value reorientation of students and parents on the wrongly held perception of some courses of study as not being lucrative. We would also like to note that successive governments have not shown adequate understanding of the imperative of steady power supply to propel industrial/economic output and thereby boost youth employment.
For the umpteenth time, we want to urge federal government to encourage decentralisation and diversification of electricity supply to make it more readily available and affordable. Electricity is the oxygen for economic boom and general good living. Ultimately, it is government’s lead effort in stemming youth unemployment that will provide the incentive for private sector collaboration.
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