By Ogechukwu Chukwugekwu
25/04/22 Unemployment/Stakeholders
Unemployment has continued to pose a major challenge to young people and the country’s economy.
Due to the small take home pay of some employed youths, they could be described as under-employed.
Most of the graduates, after the national service, do not get adequately employed, let alone the illiterate ones.
To address this challenge, some Stakeholders have called for a critical and holistic analysis of the unemployment situation in the Country with a view of addressing it holistically.
Some of them stressed the need for less emphasis on certificate, equip undergraduates with necessary skills such that they become employable on graduation.
A former Secretary General of the Universal Peace Federation, Dr Raphael Okoh stressed that the system of education needed to be re-strategized to help address unemployment.
” I think fundamentally, to deal with the problem of unemployment, we need to raise people who are employable. This is number one challenge. In other places, in other societies, when people graduate from school, either they can create job, or those who have created jobs will employ them and those jobs will work, but in our country, those who finish from school are not employable, many of them, even when you employ them, the company will not stand. Most of the government establishments are not sustainable, they depend on oil money “.
Dr. Okoh stressed that the education system must be reviewed and overhauled to integrate character, skills and intellectual capacity.
” Today it’s more fashionable to learn tailoring or carpentry than to go to the university and study fashion design. Because you go to the university, it’s just theories, somebody who studied electrical engineering may not have seen an electric bulb before, somebody who has studied mechanical engineering have not even seen how the gear of a vehicle looks like”.
He said that the Government, parents and relevant stakeholders had one role or the other to play.
Speaking on the same issue, the Executive Director, Girls & Youths Re-Integration Network (GYRIN), Ms Kehinde Charity Awujoola said the Government needed to open the economy to achieve industrialization by designing and implementing policies that would attract local and foreign.
” The government needs to do a massive reformation of our educational system where practical and research should be given more emphasis. Also opening the Nigerian economy more to achieving industrialization by designing policies and seeing to the implementation of this policies where economic investors both local and foreign are encouraged to invest in the country by providing ‘a very good ease of doing business”.
Ms Awujoola said diversification of the economy by moving from dependence on oil to economic development in agriculture, finance, technology, sports, maritime and entrepreneurship which could help bring economic prosperity to the country.
“Also huge diversification of the Nigerian economy where we can move comfortably from a mono economy in oil production alone to economic development in agriculture/ , finance, technology, sports, maritime and entrepreneurship which can help bring economic prosperity to the country”.
She called on Non-governmental organizations to support the government by keying into Social investments programme of the government, where they could identify the vulnerables and provide vocational trainings, support SME’s, andgive educational scholarships and financial support to students at all levels.
The youth leader advised young people to lay hands on doing something even if their preferred job isn’t coming forth.
She urged them not to stay idle, as their involvement in economic activities in the country would keep oiling the economy because they provide the larger chunk of the population.
