Addressing High Youth Unemployment Rate, The CBN Approach

According to the reports by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria’s youth population eligible to work is about 40 million.

Out of this, only 14.7 million are fully employed while the other 11.2 million are unemployed. This has been a concern for authorities as there have been various suggestions on what needs to be done to reverse this trend.

In a recent interview, President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Quadri Olaleye, said: “Government must, as a matter of urgency, fix the refineries, stop individuals from mining our mineral resources, encourage local content, discourage influx of expatriates, stop smuggling, build recycling plants, infrastructure, fix power, sign MOU with automobile companies to assemble their vehicles in Nigeria.

“To be frank, the revival of five critical sectors of the nation’s economy is enough to reduce the unemployment rate drastically. The aspect of interest rate should also be looked into.

“Government must deliberately and sincerely martial out plans cum palliatives to encourage the informal sector of the economy. Similarly, I want to appeal to wealthy Nigerians to invest here in the country,” he explained.

The situation has also fostered debate on the role of the monetary authorities in curbing the unemployment rate.

Analysts have said, Monetary policy has a dual mandate of guaranteeing high employment rate and price stability. At one time or another, economic agents around the globe have also tried to use monetary policy to achieve almost every conceivable economic objective with economic growth and low level unemployment often high in the list.

The proponents of this argument are of the view that when the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) embarks on an expansionary monetary policy, it does so to stimulate domestic economy and reduce the unemployment rate, while contractionary policy involves raising interest rates to combat inflation.

But the CBN has not minced words in the strategies it is using to battle the high unemployment rate. According to the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, recently in addressing the concerns of unemployment said: “Some Nigerians have argued that the CBN policies are targeted against the youth. Let me say that we are doing everything possible to put in place policies that will benefit all Nigerians.

“CBN is very conscious of the fact that our youth population of between 18 to about 40, 45 constitute close to 60 percent of our population. We are doing everything possible to ensure that we take them into account in all our policy decisions.

“The level of unemployment is regrettable. But I am saying everything is being done to redress that situation. I will give an example. I read how much we have granted in loans under our creative industry financial initiative, which is primarily for the youth. Almost close to about N3.5 billion has been disbursed,

“Our AGSMEIS fund is substantially being disbursed to people in this age. Almost close to about N150 billion has been disbursed to nothing less than 60% of the people in this bracket.