NIGERIA'S RISING UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
The National Bureau of Statistics recently put the unemployment rate in Nigeria at 27.1% in the second quarter of 2020 from 23.1% in the third quarter of 2018, the last time such report was made public. Since that report hit the ground, arguments and counterarguments have ensued regarding government's efforts at tackling this existential threat.
For critics, government's attitude across tiers is at best lackadaisical, nonchalant and indifferent while at worst, dispiriting, demoralizing and discouraging. With that heartbreaking report, unemployment now stood at a staggering rate of 21.7 million as more Nigerians, ready and agile continued to roam cities in desperate hunt for scarce jobs. For a serious, committed and people-oriented government, such heart-wrenching revelation would not only have been troubling but concrete and workable plans intended to holistically tackle and address such scourge would have been reeled out.
Aside NBS jolting figures, emerging facts if critically assessed, might paint an uglier picture than presently peddled by government. This proposition is partly hung on two-fold conjecture: one about lack of central database initiated to capture unemployment rate in the country from urban dwellers to inhabitants of hinterlands and on the other, to unwillingness of most Nigerians to disclose their job statuses.
Tunde, a young graduate was a beneficiary of NPower program before his service year. During his compulsory National Youth Service, his volunteering job with N-Power was on as was his monthly allowance from NYSC. This kind of discrepancy would have been tracked had we a national database in place to trace such double benefits. Three weeks after his service, he was employed into a big IT firm in Lagos due to his family ties with the firm's CEO. Even at that, his job hunt especially that of federal government was as serious and ruthless as it is amid completely unemployed graduates.
These two phenomena: lack of central database and unwillingness of Nigerians to disclose their job statuses if continued to be treated with levity will keep Nigeria's quest for accurate data hampered.
Data collection, with penchant for honesty and sincerity, requires strong political will. But for a country fraught with corruption and tribalism, such has remained a white elephant project. In other words, figures reeled off by NBS will remain a subject of debate both from pro and anti-government critics and dingbats for a while.
A disturbing four million Nigerians were estimated to apply for the paltry 400,000 N-Power batch C jobs. From all indications, this startling disclosure does not just portend a serious danger for Nigeria but also put the country on notice of social unrest.
While the country continues to sit comfortably on a gun powder, it is important to draw examples from revolutionary Arab spring which swept Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Algeria - and others occasioned by high unemployment rate, with systemic, wanton and institutional corruption a close relative.
––Muftau Gbadegesin, muftaugbadegesin@gmail.com.