Time bomb

THE menace of chronic youth unemployment in
Nigeria has at various times been described as
a ticking time bomb. This implies that when
the problem assumes an uncontrollable
dimension, it will explode, with deleterious
effects on the society. We are afraid that the
challenge has become more urgent and
dangerous than this ‘ticking time bomb’
imagery suggests. For, the explosives
generated by unemployment are already
sounding all around us, and we cannot pretend
that the evil days are not here already.
It stands to reason, for instance, that there is
a clear correlation between the youth
unemployment in the land and the reserve
army of idle and ignorant hands that a sect like
Boko Haram is able to recruit for its nefarious
purposes. In the same vein, the ever increasing
wave of armed robberies, kidnappings,
mindless assassinations and other crimes
perpetrated mostly by youths across the land,
cannot be delinked from the spectre of mass
joblessness. Again, the effects of such social
vices like drug addiction, excessive alcoholism
and prostitution, which breed diseases such as
tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS are already manifest
in our country on a large scale.
The magnitude of the unemployment menace
was, once again, brought to the front burner
by no less a person than Chief Christopher
Kolade, Chairman of the Subsidy Re-investment
Programme (SURE-P) at a sensitisation forum
for firms in Ilorin, Kwara State. Noting that 40
million Nigerians, i.e. 23.9 percent of the
population, are unemployed, Kolade lamented
the “inability of the system to absorb the
approximately 300,000 graduates churned out
of our tertiary institutions annually”.
While we admire Kolade’s forthrightness in
making public the dismal statistics of
unemployment in the country, we believe that
his figures may indeed, inadvertently, disguise
the seriousness of the problem. In other
words, the 40 percent unemployment rate he
cites may not necessarily include the
chronically underemployed such as casual
workers, or those who are only employed
seasonally due to the vagaries of the weather.
We commend the Graduate Internship Scheme
(GIS) through which the government aims to
generate employment for about 50,000
unemployed graduates in 36 states and the
Federal Capital Territory in one year. The
objective of the scheme is to improve the skills
of unemployed graduates through work
placement in registered firms. Yet, this scheme
too is not without its difficulties because, as
Kolade observed, “only 35 percent of 2,000
registered firms had met minimum
requirement for participation while over
96,000 unemployed graduates had applied”.
This, of course, raises a number of critical
questions. Was there proper coordination
between the SURE-P and the organised private
sector before this scheme was introduced?
Again, what is the relationship between the GIS
scheme and the National Youth Service Corps
(NYSC) since the latter also entails graduates
serving one year internship with various firms,
with the government paying them a monthly
stipend of N25,000 while participating firms
will provide adequate opportunity for work,
mentoring and personal accident insurance?
Kwara State offers a graphic picture of the
challenges confronting this initiative. Out of 46
organisations registered for the exercise, five
have been approved to take interns. And out of
3,290 graduates registered, 21 have been
matched to firms but only three have been
hired. We can thus understand why Mr. Kolade
passionately appealed to firms to partner with
government in addressing graduate
unemployment.
But then, business firms are not philanthropic
outfits. There is still no alternative for the
provision by government of basic
infrastructure such as motorable roads, an
efficient rail network, efficient transportation
and communication systems, adequate security
and uninterrupted power supply that will
expand opportunities for business, enhance
their margins for profitability and enable them
to hire more staff.