By Simeon-Nwankwo O’diwe
The Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund(NSITF) is set for a new flank in the battle against unemployment and poverty, the biggest challenge facing the nation as the twin sponsors of insecurity ravaging the land! According to the managing director of the agency, Dr. Mike Akabogu, at a media briefing in the twilight of 2021, the agency will this year expand its operations to skills acquisition and conditional cash benefits to well-documented and verifiable vulnerable Nigerians, as part of its social security services. Under this novel initiative, the socially handicapped will be availed cash benefits while a sizable population of youths will be enrolled into skills training to empower and employ themselves as well as others .
According to the managing director, the agency decided to move the needle beyond its primary mandate of employee compensation, that is, indemnity to workers who sustain injury or die in the course of work and similar compensation to employers with proven loss of man hours. This new role ought not be strange to the agency, taking into consideration its ancillary mandate on social security. The difference, perhaps, is that here is a new management determined to break the crouching hills of lethargy, with eyes fixed on services to a greater number of Nigerians.
In essence, the NSITF will, from the sidelines, join its parent Ministry of Labour and Employment and its sister agency, the National Directorate of Employment(NDE) in broadening opportunities for Nigerians to further access the elastic life-saving prospects in the blue collar world. This is a highwater mark from a management with focus on charting a new course from the agency’s not too glorious past. Indeed, the decision by the NSITF to venture into skills acquisition and by extension, job creation which goes along side it, comes at a time of lacerating unemployment specter, and therefore overly auspicious .
Recall that the President, Muhammadu Buhari had in his independence address on October 1, 2021, promised to lift 100, 000 million Nigerians out of poverty in ten years. Recall too that the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige has kept expressing huge worry over rising unemployment , linking it to the ascending tide of insecurity ravaging the country at large, while harping on skills acquisition as key to stemming the social upheaval. But the statistics keeps hitting notches up . The Nigeria Bureau of Statistics in the last quarter of 2021 released an embarrassing figure of 33.3 %, described as the highest ever. And in July the same year, the world Bank released another worrying report indicating that Nigeria is passing through its worst unemployment crisis, with an astronomical rise in the number of Nigerians, desperately seeking asylum overseas. Add this to the political distemper in the land, a scary outlook worsened by alarming spate of banditry , kidnapping and violent crimes and you figure out the citizenry housed in one huge prison. Commendable therefore that the NSITF has chosen to intervene at a time of tension whose capacity can boil a stone into a pulp. Perhaps , tardiness by previous management in plugging this large chink in the armory of social welfarism, which is latent in its core mandate , might have spurred a bill pending in the national assembly for the creation of a National Social Security and Welfare agency. That is a matter for discussion another day . But suffice that such a move at a point the Federal Government is under pressure to the implementation of Orasanya report on the merger of agencies with similar services is multiple steps backwards . A huge spanner in the delivery of the NSITF mandate .
However, what needs elucidation is how the NSITF intends to achieve this skill training programmes. Is it aligning with the NDE , the foremost agency charged with such responsibility or with the skills department of the Ministry of Labour and Employment? The story of skill centres scattered across the country is not a cheerful one. Many ministries have separately-run skills centres, apart from the ones attracted by many National Assembly legislators to different constituencies – all working in silos and independent of others established by the Ministry of Labour as well as the NDE in almost all the states. Truth is that some have become a decent habitat for the wild. Though the Minister of Labour had in 2017 announced plans for integration of all Federal Government-owned skills centres as well as the harmonization of their curriculum for international standardization, investigation reveals that work is still afoot.
But this new initiative by the NSITF is self- defining . It aligns with the directive of the Minister in June 2021 when the new management assumed office to be “ creative and innovate in a manner that meaningfully contributes to the economic recovery plan of the Federal Government.” And the leaves no one in doubt of its direction as it espouses a clear vision of the road map as captured by Akabogu. “ The provision of social protection through the agricultural sector is aimed at reducing unemployment in Nigeria. The youthful population, especially the unemployed data, stands at an enormous rate. It is natural to submit that if youths in their productive age are actively engaged in agriculture, considering the benefits therein, the tendency to engage in social vices would reduce drastically. Secondly, the poverty reduction and government agenda to feed its teeming population with home grown food would also be realized.” He went further , “ the provision of social assistance through skill acquisition is to equip the youths to be able to earn a living to sustain themselves. If unemployed persons learn a certain skill, it will enable such persons work and support themselves and others around them, hence, become employers of labour.”
Keen observers of developments in the labour sector believe the NSITF has all it takes to excel in this area. It can tap into the leverage provided by the 180,000 employer-companies enrolled by it, especially those in the industrial sector. With proper liaison, they can provided the need ground for skills training of intended recruits. The other is that monitoring of the trainees and extension of logistics will be eased by the officers in agency’s 56 branches and 11 regional offices across the federation. Perhaps, the dormant resources, which unscrupulous elements had hitherto pillaged to the disrepute of the agency, will find their way in what looks like another armature of liberation for suffering Nigerians.
For those familiar with the agency, what a better way to end the piece than a reverse of the rhetorical encounter between Philip and Nathaniel over Nazareth, the birthplace of Christ. In NSITF, no doubt, something good is coming out of Nazareth.
•O’diwe writes from Abuja .