The federal government has unveiled strategies to create 20 million jobs from agriculture, construction, transport and the services sectors in the next four years.
The minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Okechukwu Enalemah, presented them yesterday in Abuja at a programme organised by the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) to interface with stakeholders on strategies for Job creation by the federal government.
Enalemeh spoke as President Muhhammadu Buhari signed into law the 2019 Appropriation Bill which was passed by the National Assembly (NASS) last month. Represented by the permanent secretary in the ministry, Mr. Edet Akpan, the minister said that his ministry had charged ITF to come up with revolutionary multi-faceted job wealth creation strategies that would provide a lasting solution to unemployment in the country.
In his presentation, the director-general of ITF, Mr Joseph Ari, said that despite the government’s social investment programmes to get Nigerians engaged such as the N-Power Initiative, TraderMoni, Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme (GEEP) and Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSF) among other numerous skills acquisition programmes being implemented by agencies like the ITF, unemployment still remains a teething challenge.
Citing the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report of the fourth quarter of 2017 to the third quarter of 2018, Ari lamented that the total number of Nigerians that were unemployed increased from 17.6 million in fourth quarter of 2017 to 20.9million in third quarter of 2018.
He said that this was despite the fact that the number of people in employment increased from 68.4 million in the third quarter of 2015 to 68.72 million in the third quarter of 2016. The figure rose to 69.09 million in the third quarter of 2017, and 69.53 million in the third quarter of 2018.
“What the report indicated is that, although government efforts to create jobs may be having an impact, the number of unemployed is still rising,” he explained.
Ari said that Nigerian tertiary institutions of learning produce up to 500,000 graduates every year with only a fraction able to secure employment. “These are statistics that should bother any Nigerian,” he added. According to him, ITF has equipped over 450,000 Nigerians with skills and empowered all the beneficiaries with start-up packs within the last two years, and over 80 per cent of them were doing well.
