5 COVER Unemployment graduates into Nigeria’s biggest problem
The disaffection with the high and mighty also rubs off on employers of labour.
They are “not helping matters,” laments Johnbull.
“They create all kinds of barriers that make it difficult for people like us to get employed. The work experience some of the employers gives out as one of the major requirements is another cause for concern. At times they ask for five to 10 years experience. How can people like us survive in such situation?”
Some have died in that situation too. The starry-eyed hunt for a job isn’t just murky. Sometimes, it is outright dangerous.
In the FRSC recruitment, one person died in Lokoja. He endured a 2km road walk from Chari Maigumeri Barracks to Zango, a suburb of Lokoja metropolis. Then he dropped his tally and passed out. He was rushed to hospital. Half hour later, he was dead.
No recruitment exercise draws out the numbers as when a government agency advertises positions. And the casualties mount with each recruitment.
In 2017, Nigeria Immigrations Service opened up recruitment to fill 1,112 places, and 1.2 million applicants showed up.
Three years before, 125,000 applicants in Abuja and Lagos alone chased 4.500 jobs. Each paid N1,000 to be there.
A stampede ensued as the 69,000-strong throng packed into the National Stadium in Abuja. Thousands fainted in the stampede. At least 16 died. Faces of unemployment Elizabeth Adeleye is not dissuaded. After reading economics in Britain, she returned to Nigeria for a yearlong mandatory national service. Some 350,000 graduates mobilise for the National Youth Service Scheme every year.
Since she finished hers, Adeleye has applied “in various places” for jobs and is not anywhere near stopping until one succeeds.
She is one of the 324,000 applicants scrambling for one of 4,000 positions in the FRSC.
Matthew Nnadi, a mass communication graduate from Nnamdi Azikiwe University is hoping his shot at an FRSC position will succeed. He has “all the requirements”, he says, but he’s been trying to land a job the last four years.
Busayo Osundare studied chemistry at Federal University of Technology, Akure. Six years later, she still hasn’t landed any job. She flunked out of the FRSC recruitment for weighing above the stated weight limit. Now she is searching for work in another para-state agency.
After a degree in mathematics and five years without work, Ayo Hakeem kept his University of Jos certificate and took to waiting bars in a beer parlour. The FRSC recruitment is his next shot.
Even the recruitment has a bar that keeps prospective millions out on grounds of eligibility. Applicants who are short, over the age of 30, over weight, married, pregnant or physically challenged cannot be in line for recruitment. Numbers of desperation Daily announcements for skills seminar, self-generated income workshop and pyramid marketing schemes continue to taunt jobless millions.
Websites have grown on the strength of posting vacancy updates. And little is changing. Rate of unemployment increased from 14.2% in the fourth quarter of 2016 to 16.2% in the second quarter of 2017. In the next quarter, it bounced to 18.8%.
The number of people within the labour force who are unemployed or underemployed increased from 13.6 million and 17.7 million respectively in Q2 2017, to 15.9 million and 18.0 million in Q3 2017.
Total unemployment and underemployment combined increased from 37.2 %in the previous quarter to 40.0 %in Q3 2017.
During the quarter Q3 2017, 21.2% of women within the labour force (aged 15-64 and willing, able, and actively seeking work) were unemployed, compared with 16.5 %of men within the same period.
In Q3 2017, 16.4 %of rural and 23.4 %of urban dwellers within the labor force were unemployed and unemployment is increasing at a slightly faster rate for urban dwellers than it is for their rural counterparts.
Underemployment is predominant in the rural areas (26.9 %of rural residents within the labour force in Q3 2017), are underemployed (engaged in work for less than 20 hours a week); compared to 9 %of urban residents within the same period.
For the period under review, Q3, 2017, the unemployment rate for young people stood at 33.1% for those aged 15 to 24, and 20.2% for those aged 25 to 34.
Underemployment within the same quarter rose slightly amongst the 25 to 34 age group from 22.2 %in Q2 2017 to 22.3 %in Q3 2017; and declined slightly amongst the 15 to 24 age group from 35.1 %in Q2 2017 to 34.2 %in Q3 2017.
As of Q3 2017, 67.3% of young people aged 15-24 years were either underemployed (engaged in work for less than 20 hours a week or low skilled work not commensurate with their skills and qualifications) or unemployed (have no work at all but willing and actively seeking to work), compared to 64.6% in the previous quarter.
The combined underemployment plus unemployment rate for the 25 to 34-year age group stood at 42.5 % within the quarter under review, compared with 39.6% in the previous quarter.
Combined unemployment and underemployment rate for the entire youth labor force (1535 years) was 52.65% or 22.64 million (10.96 million unemployed and another 11.68 million underemployed), compared to 45.65% in Q3 2016, 47.41% in Q4 2016 and 49.70% in Q3 2017. White collar stress Idris Olorunshola finished political science at Olabisi Onibanjo University in 2000 and got a job three months after national service. He veered toward self employment and quit his job to start a small business.
The business buckled, and he is back in the labour market. And age is slamming doors in his face.
“Wherever I go to, they insist on employing fresh, young graduates. Some are looking for under 30, some 35. There is no training or financial support from the government,” says Olorunshola.
“That is why you see many youths desperate to leave the country. If I have the means, I will leave the country.
“If my colleagues outside Nigeria are doing a dirty job up there, and their earnings is at par with a senior manager in Nigeria, so what is the point? There is only one life and what is the essence of it if one spends so many years searching for job or source of income?”
He is married and managing a family without a job. He relies on calls to friends to assistance.
The only job he sees everywhere is teaching, and “not everyone can be a teacher,” says Olorunshola, 18 years after he bagged a bachelor’s in political science.
His story is rife in big cities. Graduates without jobs turning to operate motorcycles or tricycles. For each one, there is another who can’t sully their certificate for menial. They roam streets and knock on employers’ doors. Others turn to couch potatoes, bank on social media, friends and families for updates on job opportunities.
Unemployment is reported higher among people with postsecondary education. They account for a third of unemployed. Half their proportion accounted for combined unemployment and underemployment in the third quarter of last year.
Graduates tend to prefer whitecollar jobs rather than rural, seasonal and low skilled and lower paying blue-collar jobs that are more in supply, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Unemployment and underemployment rates vary according to the nature of economic activity predominant in the State.
States with higher focus on seasonal agriculture tend to have higher rates of underemployment compared to unemployment and may swing from high fulltime employment during periods of planting and harvest when they are fully engaged on their farms to periods of underemployment and even unemployment at other periods in between, the report stated.
The report added that states with higher propensity of women to marry early or be housewives and hence will not be considered part of the labor force also tend to have lower unemployment rates.
These States tend to have higher proportion of their economically active populations outside the labour force thereby reducing the number looking for work and hence the number that can be unemployed.
While inter-state unemployment and underemployment rates to determine performance is not advised due to the effect on migration on any states level at any point (people can move from one state to another in search of employment thereby increasing the rate in the destination state and reducing the rate in the state they left from.
In Q3 2017, Rivers state reported the highest unemployment rate (41.82 per cent) followed by Akwa-Ibom (36.58%), Bayelsa state (30.36%), and Imo state (29.47%) while Katsina, Jigawa, and Gombe recorded the highest underemployment rates during the reviewing period, of 46.19%, 43.01%, 38.38% respectively.
All those are just numbers for an unemployed. Jobseekers continue to seek, even by the millions. The openings are a handful. The applicants number in multitude. Each clutches onto qualification, skill-and hope for a miracle