Rethinking the unemployment crisis

It is a known fact that every government agency, business enterprise or technological approach that once solved or is still solving the needs of mankind started with an idea which was conceived on a fertile human mind, believed and acted upon immediately. And if this is generally accepted, it translates then, to the fact that unemployment can only happen when ideas or solutions to a human problem are no longer conceived or believed.

The question begging for an answer becomes: Are there no longer human wants to be solved? Or is the mind of the average Nigerian no longer capable of conceiving bankable ideas that can create career opportunities? Or is it government’s laziness?

What the high rate of unemployment in the country today truly depicts is that both the federal, state and local government as well as the private sector lacked the will-power to continue to initiate ideas that are capable of providing solution to the numerous human wants of contemporary existence while providing employment for the unemployed; in the process. As the APC-led government boasts about lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty; it is necessary they understood what job creation required.

Since 2015, Nigeria has witnessed an onslaught against business establishments, under-funding of relevant government agencies responsible for the salaries of many and stringent multiple tax regimes that has compounded the dilemma of the average Nigerian of productive age. Just recently on February 1, the implementation of the new VAT of 7.5% commenced and, you get the impression that even though government wanted to create jobs, its policies are destroying existing ones.

It would have made sense if more jobs were created instead of increasing VAT. This is the reason I urge that government needed to first understand what unemployment was in order to know what job creation entailed. A few years ago, following the inability of the Nigeria Telecommunication (NITEL) to generate returns on investment for government, there became the need to liberalise that sector.

The liberalisation of the sector alone created hundreds of direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs. That was an eye-opener which should guide the government to do an overhaul in agencies like the Police, electricity sector, transport and housing.  And, if Nigeria’s existence in this age of limitless opportunities still attracted an unfriendly unemployment statistics, what other evidence do we need to show that the employment generator (our mind) in us was sleeping and needed to be urgently awakened?

Comrade Ifeanyichukwu Mmoh,

Abuja

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