Unemployment and a nation’s shame March 26, 2014by Our Reader Leave a Comment I couldn’t help tears from dropping down my eyes on March 15 when I saw our youths, unemployed graduates who ended their lives untimely in their quest for the Nigeria Immigration Service job. This, no doubt, was an avoidable tragedy but for the state of the nation. Every Nigerian leader, both past and present, has his share of blame in what our country has turned to. In those days of yore, as I was told, a secondary school-leaver was a gold while a university graduate was seen as a god who had conquered all hurdles to gain knowledge. As such, the tradition was that the graduates should choose and pick the job they liked most among the many juicy ones that came begging their attention. Today, the opposite is the case as a graduate could even lose his life in the process of looking for a manageable job that may help “put body and soul together”. This is the picture of 500,00 youths who applied for less than 5,000 NIS job slots. Should I even say, this generation is at the suffering end of the acts of commission and omission of our fathers’ generation. Because to me, it seems there is no solution in sight yet. This is the same generation that Boko Haram has been unleashing its dastardly act on with its bombings of schools, killing and maiming of corps members, and schoolchildren thereby reducing our number in spite of being tagged, ‘the leaders of tomorrow.’ Those who escape the horror of suicide bombers are made to die of hunger, joblessness or stampede during recruitment. Unfortunately, the children of the high and mighty, who are more instrumental in what Nigeria has become, either have enviable jobs waiting for them on graduation or have to travel abroad to seek a greener pastures. Besides, many of them do not even have to school here. They see our higher institutions as glorified secondary schools with little or no facilities to run them as a plague within while incessant lecturers’ strike is the plague without. According to the National Bureau of Statistics’ General Household Survey (1999-2011),Nigeria’s unemployment rate jumped from eight per cent in 1999 to an average of 13.3 per cent in 2000 to 2008, and then jumped again after the global financial crisis to an annual average of 21.66 per cent in 2009 to 2011,to peak at 23.9 per cent. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s economy has grown very fast in the last 13 years in response to the surges in global oil and non oil commodity prices. In particular, as stated by the NBS ((1999-2011),Nigeria’s nominal Gross Domestic Product doubled from N20tr in 2007 to N40tr in 2012. In spite of this paradoxical growth, we are told, “Nigeria is broke and the country is bankrupt tomorrow.” I pray we will not wake up someday to hear that our country has been sold due to lack of resources to run it in the face of huge endowments of natural resources. One of the responsibilities of government in a sane environment is to provide jobs for its citizens. This, however, should not be based on “who knows who” but on merit. Also, good jobs should not be the destiny of the few privileged while the poor are asked to make do with crumbs that fall from the table and even die in the process of scavenging for it. Government should be committed to creating an enabling environment where business can thrive; where investors can freely operate. Then, the scourge of unemployment can be reduced. We are tired of the activities of insurgents today, militants tomorrow, and kidnappers the day after. There should renewed commitment on the part of our leaders to ensuring security of lives and property. The political class should see the immigration recruitment tragedy which resulted in the death of 20 promising youths as their failure and shame. They should take deliberate steps to save this nation from collapse and put an end to avoidable loss of lives. Unemployment should be tackled head long and be made a thing of the past in our country. Also, recruitment should not be a death trap for our teeming youths. We should seek improved ways of conducting interviews without having to put the lives of our people in danger.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 17:50:11 +0000