Unemployment

Nigerian Youths and Unemployment

The issue of unemployment in Nigeria cannot be over emphasized because the greatest problem affecting Nigeria today is youth unemployment. It is a social problem in any nation. The unemployment rate can be described as the number of people actively looking for a job divided by the labour force.  Unemployment is a problem that most nations have faced at one point or the other, and each society must find a way to solve its unemployment problem. However, youth unemployment is one of the developmental problems developing economies in the 21^st century. When the economy is not growing, then jobs aren’t being created and unemployment rate rises.

There are many causes of unemployment among which are structural imbalance and lack of national economic growth which result in closures of industries. In our country today, unemployment is believed to account for most of the social crimes in the Nigerian society. The high rate of insecurity is also blamed on unemployment. Therefore if issues of rising unemployment are not addressed properly, it could lead to serious national crisis in Nigeria. The situation is already impacting negatively on the mental health of Nigerian youths.

According to a recent survey by International Youth foundation (IYF) and Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Nigerian youths have ranked world’s No 1 most unhappy people. According to them, Nigeria came last in providing safety and for its youths; 27th position in the area of economic opportunities for youths. It is obvious that the youths are angry, and a situation like this could lead to many vices that could affect the country. Lack of gainful employment leads to brain drain as many of the skilled people trained by Nigeria government and parents have to leave to foreign countries to survive the economic hardship in the country. Today, many of our best scientists, surgeons and engineers have left the country as a result of lack of job security. To make matters worse, employment opportunities in Nigeria have been totally reduced to what is called man-know-man. There are two ways to secure employment in Nigeria today. One way is by who you know; the second way is by how much you are able to pay to corrupt government officers. The implication is that if you do not have the right connections, and you do not have the money to buy employment, then you might just remain unemployed for life. This situation explains why some Nigerian youths organise themselves into militant groups and area boys.

A simple example of this is the recent shabbily organised recruitment exercise for job seekers wishing to join the Nigeria Immigration service, which turned into a tragic bloodbath. It is unfortunate that a government organisation like the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) demanded payments from unemployed youths in the country before they would be allowed to participate in its recruitment exercise. Nearly a million unemployed Nigerian youths were made to apply for 3,000 job positions for which each applicant paid N1, 000, amounting to over N6 billion extorted from Nigerian jobless youths. Over 500,000 of them were shortlisted for the exercise that turned awry. Most of the applicants were seen looking haggard and frustrated and anxiously looking for refreshment. The unemployed young men and women who had reportedly paid a fee each besieged the designated test venues in their thousands. In desperation to get a job, the precious lives of innocent unemployed youths were lost. This indeed is a huge shame. The unemployment situation in Nigeria is becoming an embarrassment to the nation.

Reacting to the Nigerian Immigration Service recruitment tragedy, the Governor of Edo State described the unfortunate incident as sad and embarrassing to the world. Also the Secretary to the State Governor, Prof. Julius Ihonubere, said that the incident “shows failure at all levels. We  have no training to package people who have qualifications that can work; we have no serious training on how to get people self-employed, not even on how to encourage people to go for post- graduate training for specialized courses so that they can be employed or self-employed. Go and look at how many of youth are unemployed; this insult has to stop at some point. We have to rise beyond ethnic narrow calculations to get to the point where we send our first eleven or our very best who can replace us’’.

Governors of the APC in Nigeria have vowed to tackle the menace of unemployment in their respective states, saying it is a major impediment to Nigeria’s quest for economic development. Well let’s see how far this promise can go and I certainly hope it’s not one of their campaign strategies for the upcoming elections. The problem of unemployment is a global one that is touching many countries in various degrees, but Nigeria’s unemployment rate is spiralling upwards, and growing uncontrollably every year.

by Rifkatu Yusuf