Youth obey the clarion call! That was the first phrase that came to mind as men and women of different kinds, all dressed in white t-shirts, shorts and sneakers screamed, thronged, fought, pinched and even stampeded their way through, just in a bid to obey this clarion call.
From every corner of the metropolis they came, first in droves, then hundreds, thousands and then, hundreds of thousands, until the eye could no longer see but a sea of white bodies scattered like white albino soldier ants all over the main bowl of the National Stadium Surulere, Lagos.
That hot saturday morning, the stadium shook and strained under the weights of the over fifty thousand young men and women who came for the Nigerian Customs Service Recruitment exercise.
Are these all unemployed youths? You ask yourself… Do you mean that the State of the Economy is that bad that there are no jobs to occupy these agile gentlemen and ladies with skills in different area of study?
These and many more rhetorical questions keep springing up and you end up concluding… Oh Yes, this sure is a MegaCity… City mega in unsettleness and state of Unemployment.
Welcome to Lagos! Eko o ni Baje o (Lagos will not spoil) a deep Sigh seals the day!
Despite the fact that different programs have been introduced by various administrations over the years, tranversing many administrations to address youth unemployment, which has been an issue of significant public concern since the days of SAP (Structural Adjustment Programme), the issue remains appalling.
Youth unemployment became the focus of the social policy of the military government that ruled Nigeria for much of its years as an independent nation. Let us not even sway to Youths under-employment, a cause that is at the moment an issue of national attention.
A situation where you see a youth struggling for survival under the weather of delivering an assigned task and at the same time he or she is being under-paid! Disturbing is an understatement.
The average human has unlimited needs… They never stop coming! The average Lagosian on the other hand has loads of hiccups and situation alert almost every minute. All of these would be minimal if and if only there are enough provisions to lessen the load and daily burden they stumble upon.
As announced in a survey result recently carried out by NOI Polls unemployment and poverty were identified as the major causes of drug and substance abuse by teenagers and young adults in Nigeria. Little wonder, we have lots of youths on the streets of Lagos wandering away. Some end up as touts while some just keep to put in Fela’s words “suffering and smiling” till God knows when!
Information made available by the media made us to realise that the initial reaction of the government was to draft unemployed youths to public programs such as Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) and the Directorate of Food, Road and Rural Infrastructure (DIFRRI), which provided immediate and direct jobs to participants interested in agriculture.
More coordinated and planned measures later followed, and these were classified into three categories: labour demand, labour supply and labour market interventions. Are these so called classifications not too ambiguous for comprehension? All the youths need is a freaking job! They want to get busy and put food on their table… Is this too much to ask?
But a simple explanation and understanding is necessary too. Labour demand strategy focused on creating jobs immediately through public works or creating certain jobs in the private sector aimed at promoting entrepreneurship and skills enhancement. Labour supply strategy dealt with the training and education of prospective job seekers.
The labour market intervention strategy focused on improving the labour market and matching demand and supply inter-relationships.
But the question is why do we keep having loads and loads of youths unemployed on a daily basis? This is an indication that strategies put in place are not effective and need to be fine-tuned too.
Owing up the fact that Nigeria’s population is said to have reached about 167 million people in 2012 (National Bureau of Statistics). The National Population Commission (NPC, 2013) states about half of the population is made up of youth, defined as individuals between 15 and 34 years of age.
Unfortunately, as the youth population grows, so does the unemployment rate.
Lagos State on the other hand estimates its population at 21 million, making Lagos the largest city in Africa and most likely one of the states with high rate of unemployment and under-employment! Sad aint it?
Lagos being a metropolitan city gives people the impression that jobs flow on the streets. Such that, everybody from everyother cities all around strive to get to Lagos with the impression of picking up that job opportunity they so desire.
But, just like in all other cities around Nigeria, it is not the case, as lagos also suffers from unemployment as well as under-employment.
As stated in a report by Punch, 2013, “Massive unemployment has made youth in the country to become elements of destabilisation and threat to socio-economic peace as more youths are now used by unscrupulous politicians to cause havoc in the country.
The report nailed it by stating, “Labour experts say the issue of unemployment sometimes arises as a result of imbalance between the kinds of workers wanted by employers and the kinds of workers looking for jobs. The imbalances may be caused by inadequacy in skills, location, or personal characteristics.
Workers with inadequate education or training and young workers with little or no experience may be unable to get jobs because employers believe these employees will not produce enough to be worth paying the legal minimum wage or the rate agreed on with the union. They, however, say the government is not doing much to address the issue of unemployment.”
This makes youth unemployment and under-employment synonymous with a roller coaster; it keeps going on and on…it keeps going in circles. The issue is yet to get to a definite end. Solutions also seem bleak and the youths keep being helpless.
We then ask ourselves, what is the way forward!
The elections are fast approaching. Attentions are running high! Here is another chance to fight for our rights!
Comfortable livelihood and standard jobs are the rights of a dedicated youth, thus, one need to be vigilant and be on the look out for an administration that will help formulate at the same time sustain empowerment programmes that seek to address the problem of youth unemployment in the country.
These administrations do not come into place except we put them into place. The only way we can put them into place is by exercising the rights of our thumbs.
By voting rightly and wisely and make this a dream come through. Not by-passing specific areas of attention on intervention programmes to address the challenge and many more locally.