By Abubakar Abdulmusawwir
A United Nations, UN, report on Nigeria’s Common Country Analysis, CCA, in 2016 revealed that Nigeria is one of the poorest countries in the world with over 80 million or 64% of her population living below poverty line. The situation remains so for decades and is increasing by the day.
Youth unemployment, which is 42% is creating poverty, helplessness and paving ways for crime and terrorism, yet nothing much has been done to address this problem that is capable of destroying us and all we have laboured for.
The sooner our government realized that the pain of unemployment, employment discrimination and being under employed propel persons into crime and all forms of atrocities to meet basic needs and also start using all the resources at her disposal judiciously to address the problem, the better.
In the last seven years, Nigerian government spent over $9billion to fight crime and terrorism, if the government can pump half of this money into businesses and sectors that can create jobs, the rate of crime will be very low and in no distant time terrorism will be a thing of the past.
Insurgent groups use financial incentives to recruit members, which breed loyalty and encourage persons to spy on their communities and provide information on security activities.
Many of the people are doing so because they have lost their sense of reasoning due to hunger and poverty. Hunger and poverty affect the functioning of people’s brain and hinder its ability to think properly.
Our policy makers had forgotten the people at the lower rung; they only remember them when election is nearby. These people that are languishing in our towns are those that are being used for all nefarious activities and recruited for insurgency. This pool of ignored youths would later become assassins, armed robbers, kidnappers and terrorists.
Many Nigerians have stopped looking for jobs because of a lack of jobs opportunities, some invested a lot in their education to the point of selling their assets and graduated with good results but are still languishing around, and the pain of unemployment has started affecting their well-being and sense of reasoning.
Even those that are working, most of it are a vulnerable employment that they cannot rely on to plan their future and that of their children.
Many of the available jobs in Nigeria robs individuals of their esteem and dignity, a lot of the workers live in extreme poverty and anguish.
It is disheartening to know that small countries in Africa like Mauritius which has no exploitable natural resources has no or little unemployed people. Nigeria has all that a country needs to prosper. We can end our problems by diversifying our economy. In addition to our abundant natural resources such as gold, oil, tin-ore and uranium, we also have huge population to support businesses.
As it is now, agriculture contributes about 17% of our GDP, and employs about 30% of the population. If we can revamp our agriculture, what we will get from it alone can earn us more than what we are earning from oil and employ more than 60% of the population.
In Nigeria, our problem is not only unemployment but also employment discrimination and discrimination in the workplace, in most cases, good jobs are given to only children of business tycoons and politically connected Nigerians.
Discriminating someone is as good as telling him to resort to violence or any form of illegality to get what is due to him since he would not get it through due process
Discrimination is like a disease since it affects the economy of any country; it deprives a country from getting the service of its intellectuals and it is the main source of inequality in the non-neoclassical view.
Secret recruitment is our way of recruitment in Nigeria, many of our big men were caught in employment scam, and they secretly hired their wards in violation of the federal character principle.
2014 Nigerian Immigration recruitment scam is one of the ugly incidences that we will always remember when 6.5 million people applied for 4000 vacant positions and each of the applicants had to pay N1000 before they could apply for the job, unknown to them they were applying for a ticket to their graves
The tragedy occurred on Saturday, March 15, 2014 where at least 16 job seekers died while many sustained various degrees of injuries including pregnant women.
Employment discrimination is not even being discussed in Nigeria because it is the order of the day and it happens in almost all recruitment. This problem needs to be addressed urgently and a lot more still needs to be done.
The level of poverty and hardship in Nigeria is unacceptable; an access to a decent job for all is the only way to combat them. The sooner our government realized that crime rate rise and fall with unemployment and took measures, the better.
Abdulmusawwir wrote via [email protected]
08069721169
