Nigeria’s economic policies are anti-job creation – Summit

The rising rate of unemployment in Nigeria has been traced to the anti-job creation policies of the government from the ICT sector to government direct employment, youth entrepreneurship scheme among others.

Nigeria with a population of 182,201,962, Nigeria is battling with 49.5 per cent youth unemployment rate as at second quarter 2016.

Experts and economic stakeholders who spoke in Lagos at the #WorldStageEconomicSummit2016 with the theme: Addressing Unemployment Crisis in Nigeria, challenged the government to carry out a major review of its economic policies for them to be problem solving rather can creating more confusion.

Dr Femi Saibu of the Department of Economics, University of Lagos, Akoka, who presented a lead paper at the summit drew attention to the government policy on the ICT revolutions saying it was employment destructive and service oriented and not production/manufacturing sectors oriented.

On government direct employment policy, he said it only created temporary jobs not employment at a greater cost while the series of youth entrepreneurship scheme across the country including

‘You Win’, he said always ended up in creating social media entrepreneur with no employment multiplier.

Moreover, he said the Small and Medium Enterprises Credit Guarantee Scheme had failed to achieve its objective as the funds were difficult to access and politicized, while “people see it as share of national cake and generate little if all employment.”

At the summit organised by World Stage Limited with support from the Central Bank of Nigeria, Shell Nigeria, United Bank for Africa, Bank of Industry and Zenith Bank, the scholar said what the country needed were large scale industrial set up that can mop up the thousand of unemployed youths.

He said the country needed the establishment of businesses with value chains in productive sectors with greater employment multiplier and government spending in key sectors to provide basic infrastructures that reduce cost of business.

“Not direct underemployment of youths in any disguise that create fiscal cliff,” he said.

“Innovations and technology that lead to higher productivities and not those that take jobs from men to machines.”

Barrister Oduntan in his presentation ‘Getting The Power Sector Right To Boost Productivity’ said the power sector was facing many surmountable huge and difficult challenges that had made it unable to play its role as the engine of growth for job creation.

According to him, “The whole electricity supply chain still remain comatose; the promised increased generation and reliability as part of privatization –has not happened; generation continued to hover in the mid-range of 3000 to 4000Megawatt; energy theft and meter bypassing are very rampant; and insufficient number of meters due to liquidity gap and massive shortfalls.”

Moreover, he said the “GENCOs have been bedevilled by gas supply issues, cost and vandalization of gas pipeline networks in Nigeria, delay and frustration in construction power plant sometimes on land and contract.”

He there was hope for the sector if some milestones such as funding of liquidity by subsidy & private sector fund, incremental generation, stability and security in generation we can achieved.

“Revenue gap from minor review must fully recognise the variance in forex applied by Gencos and drop in generation for six months,” he said.

Other milestones he prayed for include that MDA debts must be paid, focus on transmission funding & security of power supply, cost-reflective tariffs for DISCOs, strong and independent regulator, continuous and sustained investment on electrical infrastructures particularly TCN, aggressive metering across the board must be sustained.

The DPR boss represented by Kanmi Ayodeji, Manager, Planning, in a presentation ‘Nigeria’s Oil & Gas Reforms- Boosting Indigenous Participation & Energy Security’ said current reforms, initiatives and strategic plans in the oil sector were capable of boosting economic growth and create jobs.

He mentioned reforms such as initiated the modular refinery strategy to boost domestic refining capacity, improve supply of petroleum products and create direct and ancillary jobs.

Moreover, he said automated operational processes of DPR had improved “transparency of government’s regulatory roles of the Industry, effective administration of all critical operational and planning data and revenue for government and DPR.”