Let’s start judging government by the jobs created (2)

To get a clearer picture of how bad such inflation rate is, compare it to UK’s rate which is a mere 0.5%. Clearly, from the foregoing scenarios, unemployment and inflation rates in a society would serve as more practical and realistic prognosis than the sophisticated GDP tool applied in the industrialized Western economies which fails to capture the workforce under the radar.

This is why it is very important to make a strong case for a paradigm shift to using jobs creation to assess the impact of our elected political office holders particularly for those in the executive arm of government. No longer would it be sufficient for ministers and commissioners at the federal and state levels respectively, after the weekly or monthly federal or state executive council meetings, merely announce the value of the contracts awarded in terms of money to be expended. Henceforth, emphasis should be on the number of jobs to be created and the impact of the projects on the people in the community in particular or society at large. That is the change Nigerians voted for and the least they expect now.

While l was researching this article, l came across a similar policy being applied by one of the state’s in the Niger Delta.

In Delta state for instance, the governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, upon assumption of office embarked on implementing his campaign promise, tagged STEP-acronyms for Skills Training Entrepreneurship Programme, which is a subset of his major campaign mantra -SMART.

In 2015, 1070 trainees consisting of 664 males and 406 females were admitted into 116 training centres across the state, where skills as sophisticated as computer hardware repairs to practical ones like hairdressing, tailoring, cosmetology, events management and blocks and interlocking stones moulding, were taught. Another 540 graduated this April (18/4/2016) with starter packs issued to enable the entrepreneurs commence their trade and possibly employ others. The number of people so far trained may not appear like much, but those are just the first and second circles and l’m told more of the entrepreneurship empowerment programmes are scheduled to follow quarterly.

The beauty of the SMART/STEP agenda is that it is the overarching Key Performance Indicator, KPI, for the state government. In other words the govt wants to be judged by the number of jobs created, not just by the number of infrastructure like roads, schools and health care institutions.

On a closer look at the state govt finances, it was discovered that the wage bill is about N2 billion more than her monthly allocation from federation account. It becomes clearer why the governor had no choice than to make jobs creation through private enterprise his cardinal mission in governance. It is only by creating private sector jobs through entrepreneurship, that the burden on govt can be eased.

Back in the days, Asaba textile mill, African Timber and Plywood, AT&P, Sapale, Delta Steel Rolling mill, and Superbru, Agbaro provided alternative jobs to employment in government, but with all the listed firms now moribund, government became the only source of employment, hence it is currently over burdened.

It needs no emphasis that what’s happening in Delta state applies to practically all the states in Nigeria hence they are now insolvent, with a huge back log of worker’s salaries. This necessitated the recent federal govt bail out of states.

For Nigerian economy that is recording over 12% unemployment and 14% underemployment rate, according to NBS current data, making employment a KPI for government is a very remarkable and noble effort by Ifeanyi  Okowa, the medical doctor turned politician. I particularly like the philosophy underpinning the STEP initiative which is focused on jobs creation and therefore recommend it to other states and the federal govt because it is an innovative way to alleviate poverty since an employed person would almost certainly have a roof over his or her head just as he or she would not go to be in an empty stomach.

Going by president Buhari’s campaign promise to create 500,000 jobs for unemployed graduates, he is also a job creation enthusiast. Although his jobs promise is yet to be kept, l would like to believe that it is in the pipeline. I’m optimistic because it is consistent with his emotional attachment to Nigerian masses-for whose sake he is shying away from deregulating the petroleum sector-ostensibly owing to the fact that he does not want to see the long suffering Nigeria faced with more hardships on account of increase in the price of petroleum products.

For his commitment to the cause of the common man whose destiny he vowed to change from poverty to better quality of life when he was seeking their mandate, if l were Mr. president, l would change the nomenclature of the ministry of Labour and Poverty to the ministry of Employment and Productivity to reflect more appropriately the key focus of his administration which is believed to be people centric.

Perhaps I should point out that Nigeria would not be alone if she jettisons the use of GDP – a western tool for measuring progress and development in a specific period and in a particular community. In the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan in East Asia, the KPI for development is not GDP, neither is it employment or inflation rating, but quality of life which is determined by Gross National Happiness, GNH – a measure of the level of happiness in the society.

Magnus Onyibe, a development strategist and futurologist, is a former commissioner in Delta state and alumnus of the Fletcher school of law and diplomacy, Massachusetts, USA.

Magnus Onyibe