Nigeria’s High Unemployment Rate: An Artificiality

Nigeria’s High Unemployment Rate:  An Artificiality

Joblessness is the condition of having no job to do by an able-bodied, man or woman to do for survival. While unemployment is enforced idealness of qualified wage earners who are willing to work but cannot find jobs to do. In a developing country like Nigeria, to be jobless or to be unemployed is tantamount to be down with leprosy. The discrimination melted out to the jobless or the unemployed is more than sometimes the one HIV/AIDS patient suffered.

Based on the causes—frictional, seasonal, structural and cyclical—of unemployment, all the nations of the world suffered some kinds of unemployment.  The fact of the matter is that Nigeria’s unemployment rate is a voodoo one, and how a country is managing with our kind of high rate of joblessness among the most productive human resource sector is something that economists have to study in detail. The average rate of unemployment in all developed nations like the UK, USA, and Canada is less than 8 percent. In countries like China, Singapore, and India, the unemployment rates are still below 34 percent (including those who are employed in the informal sector). However, all these nations still cry and shout at mountain tops about the high rates of unemployment. In these nations, unemployment rates are election issues and are also use to measure the performances of the ruling governments.

The final analysis of joblessness and unemployment is hunger and therefore, our search for peace will continue to be elusive if we do not first reduce the hunger in the land. “A hungry stomach’’, according to French writer and Poet, Jean de la Fontaine (1621-98) “has no ears’’. Therefore, all the peace messages in our media amount to zero if we do not first reduce our high rate of unemployment.

The artificiality of our high unemployment rate is anchored on one: the ghost workers syndrome, there is no way we can reduce the high level of our unemployment rate if we do not first reduce the unacceptable high level of the ghost workers syndrome in the federal, states and local governments civil services. According to the former Minister of Finance, 47,000 ghost workers were removed from ten ministries payrolls before he left office. This means that we have an average of 4,000 ghost workers in every ministry in the Federal level. The maths is now simple, times 4,000 to about our more than 40 main ministries and agencies. Consider also the ghost workers in the 36 states, including Abuja and the 774 local government areas. This simply means that we have conservatively about 23.5 million ghost workers in the federal level alone. This explains why, until 2010 the wage bill of a small state like Bayelsa (population: 2 million) was equal to that of Lagos State with a population of about the one of the Republic of Ghana (about 20 million).

The second reason why our unemployment rate is very high is the syndrome of multiple and absentee workers. Multiple workers are those who are employed in more than two or more ministries, states civil services, or sectors. Those who work in both the private (MTN for example) and the public (Federal Ministry of Education) sectors are also part of this unpatriotic game. Absentee workers are those who are being paid but do not go to work because they are too old or because they are outside the country doing business or schooling. Absentee workers also include infant and child workers who are employed in the federal, states and local government areas. We have more than 20 million multiple and absentee workers in this nation. This syndrome that is depriving qualified and willing-to-work people from working in this country is very common in the local government areas. Virtually all former and serving HPM, treasury, or senior accountant in the local government areas is guilty of this crime. It is traditional for these officials to employ all their household members including minors to work in their respective local government areas. 

Another very important reason why we cannot reduce our high rate of unemployment is the phenomenon of un-filled vacant position; this is sometimes cause by the so-called embargo on unemployment. How can a nation with 7 out of every eleven graduate that is jobless put embargo on filling vacancies that Providence has provided? The beauty of the employment/unemployment game is that vacancies are filled immediately they are open by death or retirement or by any other factor. We cannot place embargo on real employment opportunities made open by the forces of nature and economics and think that everything will be alright. The truth of the matter is that officials enjoy placing embargo on filling vacant positions, mostly in the states because of the tradition of embezzling these wage monies. 

The ghost of high unemployment or joblessness will continue to hunt us if we do not exorcise the evil and anti-people syndromes enumerated above. We should also stop wasting time looking for peace in the Niger Delta, in the North and in the East, if we do not address the issue of rampant hunger and absolute poverty that is mostly cause by unemployment.  As a nation we cannot live with more than half of our people jobless for a long time anymore; we cannot also blame the Almighty or the Devil if anything untoward happen to us because: the God that gives us the rashes (the large population and big landmass) according to Flora Nwapa (1931-93) has also given us the nails (crude oil and other resources) to scratch them.

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Name of writer---Charles Alfred

Address---Babcock University School of Graduate Studies, Ilisan-Remo, Ogun-State, Nigeria

Position--- PhD student, Political Science (Peace and Conflict Studies)

Contacts--- phone: 07060694033. Email=alfredcharles2000@yahoo.com