FG set to register unemployed Nigerians

Abuja (WorldStage Newsonline)-- The presidency has concluded arrangement to take census of unemployed persons in Nigerians to enable the country have accurate and reliable data of unemployed persons for job creation planning.

The presidency also disclosed that the programme will involve segmentation of the unemployed persons into various categories of skilled and unskilled while Job centers would be created in all the 36 states of the federation and 774 Local government areas in the country.

Senior Special Assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan on Job creation, Josephine Washima who disclosed this in Abuja said that job centres will handle the data base which will involve both online and physical registration at the job centers.

She said, “We do not even have accurate data base. There is no way you can plan without a data. You can tell me that I need to provide jobs, okay, but how many people do I need to provide jobs for? There is nothing to show. So we have to start building our data base now of the Nigerian labour force. Not just providing the data base, we need to segment it into skilled, semi skilled and unskilled. As far as job creation is concerned, we need to give everybody a chance. There are people who may not have gone to school, but have great talent that we need to encourage and develop”

She also said that government was prepared to work with educational institutions to make entrepreneurship part of the school curriculum as part of efforts towards the much needed orientation towards the acquisition of certificates for self employment.

She said: “We want to advocate that entrepreneurships be made compulsory part in the schools’ curriculum.  They say catch them young.  Our educational curriculum needs to be reviewed to meet industry specifics and industry demands. We cannot just say oh I read English or Political Science, if you read Political Science, you must be able to turn it into a profitable venture because the truth is that there are very few white collar jobs out there and not very body can get access to the jobs. There is this orientation that once you get out of school, you are going to get a job in an office. That is not realistic. The reality is that, no government provides more than 10 per cent of jobs but what they do is to provide the enabling environment for the private sector to be able to employ people and that is my focus now.

"The school curriculum should b reviewed as regards what is going on now globally as entrepreneurship prepares you for independence after school. And if true be told, we must learn how to be independent. We also want to establish entrepreneurship clubs in various institutions, including Primary, secondary and tertiary institutions.”

She also spoke about the need for people to have a change of orientation and attitude to work in the country; adding that "a lot of Nigerians take up jobs out of frustration or poverty and when you do that, you can never give your best."

While noting that Nigerians are very creative people, she however blamed lack of support for the inability of unemployed persons to develop their talents.

“But given the opportunity, I know a lot of Nigerians with talents which if developed, will provide jobs not only for themselves, but also for others too as well as grow the economy. So, it is a two way thing, the government and the individuals.”

On why most businesses do not survive in Nigeria, she blamed it on lack of and the inability of some entrepreneurs to hire qualifies hands to manage their businesses for them.

“We have some emergency entrepreneurs, people who suddenly come in contact with funds, who, may be, because their husbands have just been made Ministers, have access to resources, but do not have a clue on how to manage the business which is why most times, as soon as those people leave offices, those businesses die a natural death because those handling them were not doing it out of passion, but for other reasons. For you to be successful, you need to be determined, knowledgeable and have network of people with professional business knowledge in that field who can manage it. You may have the money to start but may not have the requisite technical -know -how to manage the business. In that case, you need to get qualify hands to manage it for you while you monitor them.”

She also decried the country's obsessive appetite for foreign imported goods which according to her was responsible for noticeable slow pace of economic development in the country.

“First of all, let me be very blunt here, we still have that slave mentality and that is what makes us prefer foreign products. Another thing is that we do not have the infrastructure for massive production. When I was working with the leather tanners, I observed that what they do is to sell the raw leather to the Chinese who make the shoes and bring back finished products into Nigeria.”

She also lamented the cost doing business in Nigeria which she said is also very high, saying, “Production is very expensive here because the infrastructure is not there. You cannot tell an SME person to come and pay as much as N2 million for a shop for two years. It is not feasible. If we are truly truthful and sincere about our plans to develop this country through creation of jobs and generation of employment, then, we need to look at how to solve these problems. We have cheap labour, but production is very expensive.  There was a time I took some investors to Benue to set up juice extracting factory at the end of the feasibility study, they said it will cost them more to power the factory than the actual production process itself so the deal did not go through because of the absence of electricity to power the factory. You not spend all your profits on diesel. We must put our house in order.”