By Devine Munachiso
The success of the privitisation programme of the Obasanjo/Atiku administration resulted in a booming economy between 1999 and 2015.
Many areas of the economy witnessed tremendous growth, leading to massive job creation in the private and public sectors.
So obvious was the growth in the country’s GDP that Nigeria consistently was adjudged the largest growing economy in Africa and one of the fastest growing in the world.
Within that period, we saw the middle class emerge and flourished accordingly with other classes.
Note that a healthy economy depends on a growing and stable middle class, given that they are the drivers of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Sadly, those gains recorded since the beginning of the Fourth Republic have totally diminished owing to the poor economic policies of the Buhari administration.
From 2015 to date, the nation has consistently witnessed a sharp decline on all development indexes.
The figures from both local and international rating agencies are suggestive of a people witnessing quick retrogression in virtually every area.
As of 2015 when President Muhammadu Buhari came to power, data from the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics ,NBS, showed that Nigeria’s unemployment rate stood at 8.19 per cent.
As of 2022, NBS said the unemployment rate jumped to 33 per cent.
The figure covers those actively seeking employment. Recall that job creation was among the campaign promises made by the All Progressives Congress, APC-led government, but it has consistently failed to create jobs since 2015.
At the moment, many Nigerians are out of jobs while those graduating from higher institutions have no hope of securing employment.
The situation has been made worse by the poor economic policies of the Buhari administration, which has strangulated both the formal and informal sectors.
This is why the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, prioritized wealth and job creation in his manifesto.
Having served as Vice President of Nigeria and being a major employer of labour , he understands the nexus between wealth creation and job creation. And he is not looking back in his drive to ensure that many Nigerians who lost their jobs as a result of Buhari’s maladministration return to work.
In his policy document entitled: “My Covenant with Nigeria,” the former Vice President identified job creation as one of the critical areas his administration would focus on.
He stated that if elected as Nigeria’s President, he would build a strong and prosperous economy, creating jobs and wealth as well as lifting millions out of poverty.
Meanwhile, in different fora, he hardly leaves anyone in doubt about how he is going to tackle unemployment.
At a campaign event in Ilorin, Atiku promised to set aside 10 billion USD to create employment and boost small and medium-scale enterprises to help employment drive for youths and women in the country.
He promised to ensure that youth unemployment was catered for in the micro, small and medium enterprises to empower the youth and to make sure that they were gainfully employed so that they could have a decent living if elected as president in 2023.
“I want to assure you that the youth unemployment, which is all over the country, is not peculiar to Kwara State or the North-Central zone.
“Most of you here are under the age of 30 and most of you here have no jobs or businesses…
“I’ve promised that I’ll set aside $10 billion to make sure that youth unemployment is catered for in micro, small and medium enterprises to empower you and to make sure that you are gainfully employed so that you have a decent living,” he explained.
It is good news that the PDP candidate recognizes that the growing large number of youths who are unemployed and underemployed in urban areas risks being involved in various forms of crimes.
To this end, he promised that: “Creating jobs and economic opportunities for these people will be vital both for reducing the ease of recruitment for violent groups and reducing underlying grievances that feed conflicts.
“Our development agenda includes the implementation of a robust job creation and entrepreneurship development programmes that will target the youth. It is designed to target specific population groups, that is, economically marginalised demographics, which are not served by the typical market systems.
“In the northern states this will include the almajirai and other under-privileged youth who have had no opportunity to acquire western-style education.
“Our job creation programme shall feature unique approaches to skills training. It will be a dual system focusing on both the informal apprenticeship system and the formal training system through ‘one-stop-shop’ styled community skills development centres (COSDECs) with a work experience learning component.
“In both systems, training will be based on the national occupational standards of the national skills qualification framework (NSQF), and assessment of the trainees will be competency-based.
“The programme will seek to create up to three million direct employment opportunities for economically-marginalised young people every year. This will contribute significantly to our goal of lifting millions of Nigerians out of poverty. It will also represent significant implications for social cohesion and national security.”
A further look into how Atiku would reverse the ugly unemployment trend showed that he would reinvigorate and re-establish our industries for economic growth.
The economic recovery thrust of his administration would be a partnership with the private sector operators whose intervention will create jobs and employment opportunities.
For those accusing him of pandering to the private sector, you can’t create jobs by ignoring private owners of businesses. After all, globally, governments have no business with job creation. All the government does is to create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive. For instance, if the government gets the power sector and road infrastructure right, investors wouldn’t hesitate in making critical investments in the country. All these are interwoven. We need the private sector to get key sectors of the economy functional for there to be jobs for the growing number of unemployed Nigerians.
When you take a critical look at other presidential candidates and what they offer, there is no gainsaying that Atiku’s blueprint is most suited for the socio-economic recovery of Nigeria.
• Munachiso, a stockbroker, writes from Broad Street, Lagos.