Minister Tasks Telecoms Industry to Create Two Million Jobs in Six Months

Concerned about the increasing rate of unemployment in Nigeria, the Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu has charged telecoms operators to come up with innovations that will lead to the creation of a minimum of two million jobs for unemployed Nigerians in the next six months.

The minister who made the call at a special reception organised by the Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) in his honour in Lagos at the weekend, said government is ready to create the enabling environment and provide the necessary support that would help in achieving the task of creating additional jobs, if the telecoms operators could come up with workable ideas to address the country’s biggest challenge.

Adebayo who frowned on a situation where most Nigerians, including some government agencies still neglect government’s efforts on local content development, by patronising foreign products and solutions at the detriment of locally developed software and hardware products, said such action amounted to huge capital flight on the part of Nigeria.

He said, if the situation was not checked, it would continue to discourage indigenous entrepreneurs from producing local products and solutions, thereby increasing the rate of unemployment in the country.

Shittu said Nigeria is already losing as much as $2.8 billion yearly to the continued importation of hardware and software solutions, which he described as a monumental loss to Nigeria.

He explained that if Nigerians begin to patronise locally developed software and hardware, local entrepreneurs would be encouraged to produce locally, improve on standards and in the process, create direct and indirect jobs for the unemployed.

“Unless government is assured that Nigeria is generating enough local capacity, it might be forced to place ban on certain importations, in order to encourage local production and job creation,” Shittu said.

Delivering a keynote address at event, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta, who was represented by the Director, Public Affairs at NCC, Mr. Tony Ojobo, said over $32 billion had been invested in the telecommunications industry, both from Direct Foreign Investment (FDI) and local investments since 2001 when GSM was introduced in the county. He said such investments had led to the creation of millions of direct and indirect jobs for Nigerians. He said that NCC would not relent in its efforts at ensuring the promotion and implementation of policies that

would further help to create jobs in the country.

“The growth of the telecoms sector is followed by massive job creation whereby several millions of Nigerians and expatriates have been gainfully employed directly and indirectly by the telecoms operators, companies and Value Added Service (VAS) providers, among others,” Danbatta said.