I have just been doing some arithmetic and realise that Nigeria needs to create about 5.2m jobs a year

Ayo Akinfe

(1) One thing I love about figures is that they never lie. Nigeria’s population is growing at a rate of 2.6% per annum, so if we want to end all this banditry, kidnapping, terrorism, armed robbery, etc, we simply need to create jobs for our youth

(2) We have a population of about 200m, meaning that every year, some 5.2m people join the populace. If we are not creating new jobs, we are just inviting poverty upon ourselves. When there are no jobs for our youth, they will inevitably take up AK47s. Every state should have a commissioner of job creation who is given stringent targets to meet

(3) At a time when crude oil sales are at an all time low and everyone is moving away from fossil fuels, the situation is even more precarious. What little wealth we have is dwindling, so there is fire in the mountain. Over the next few years, the civil service will have no choice but to freeze employment

(4) Do you know that President Barack Obama’s administration created 2.3m jobs in 2014? Donald Trump was obsessed with matching this figure and managed to do so in 2018. He touted job creation as one of his big achievements but he was just matching what his predecessor had done

(5) In his last four years in office, President Obama created 8.1m jobs in total. This remains a US record. President Obama created 43,000 more jobs per month than President Trump. I am sure President Biden will be wanting to better these figures. More importantly, I am hoping President Buhari looks to better these figures

(6) Nigeria is estimated to have a civil service of 1.2m people at the most. In the UK, the number is 430,750. As you can see, civil servants represent a very small portion of the work force and the civil service cannot be relied upon to soak up our youths. It can only take so many people, so we need constant private sector expansion

(7) Nigeria’s total labour force, i.e. people who are able and willing to work is put at 80m. With the civil service only able to take on board a maximum of 1.2m people, without private sector job creation, we are facing economic Armageddon

(8) No matter the political party in power, job creation simply has to be the main preoccupation of every federal and state government in Nigeria. If you divide that 5.2m by 36, you will realise that each state needs to create 144,444 jobs each every year

(9) Personally, I do not think it is asking too much of a state governor to woo investors that will create 145,000 jobs a year. Manufacturing, commercial agriculture, food processing, construction, transport provision, mineral extraction, infrastructural development, etc can easily create 145,000 jobs in each state. Do Nigerians ever challenge their governors on issues like this?

(10) When I look at the ongoing herdsmen saga in Ondo State for instance, if Governor Rotimi Akeredolu were to build a mega ranch of say 200 square kilometres along the Sagamu-Benin Expressway at Ore with an accompanying abattoir, dairy plant, leather factory, animal feed compounding plant, veterinary clinic, security facilities, schools, clinics, transpiration links, schools, adjacent housing units, etc, it would easily create 145,000 jobs. That highway is the main artery linking the west and east of Nigeria, so should be a thriving commercial hub. Is there any reason why our governors are not costing programmes like this and selling them to investors? 

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