President Muhammadu Buhari has advised Nigerian youths not to rely on the federal government to provide jobs, rather they should put their ‘hard-earned degree’ to use by identifying problems and creating jobs.
Buhari stated this during an exclusive pre-recorded interview with Channels Television at the presidential villa, Abuja, aired on Wednesday.
“I wish when they go to school and earn their degree they don’t do it thinking the government must give them jobs, you get educated and you are certainly better than an illiterate even in identifying personal problems,” he said
The president added that the status quo of having a house, car, and corporate job after acquiring a degree is simply a practice indoctrinated by colonial masters on Nigerians.
The president was of the opinion that as graduates, Nigerian youths should be able to create jobs for themselves leveraging their problem-solving skills and a large amount of arable uncultivated land that can be made use of.
“In Nigeria’s population, 35 years and below are the majority and they want the government to get jobs for them, they do not care how but only 2.5 percent of arable land remains uncultivated so, for now, our attention should be on agriculture, clearing land, having machinery,” he said.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director-general of the World Trade Organization during her tenure as Nigeria’s minister of finance said that no fewer than 1.8 million graduates in the country move into the labour market every year.
Nigeria currently has an unemployment rate of 33.3 percent according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in context over 23 million people have no jobs.
With about 215 tertiary institutions across Nigeria according to the National University Commission who produce thousands of graduates every year, concerns are raised as the country’s unemployment rate is projected to increase to 40 percent going forward.
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According to the International. Labour Organization, Unemployment in Nigeria is largely attributed to the phenomena of jobless growth, increased number of school graduates with no matching job opportunities, a freeze in employment in many public and private sector institutions and continued job losses in the manufacturing and oil sectors.
Experts say that the government has a huge role to play in creating jobs for citizens as well as providing an enabling environment for investments that will create jobs, hence the citizens’ reliance on the government for jobs.
Speaking on the high poverty rate in the country, the president said he was aware that people are suffering however the solution was still for people to return to utilizing uncultivated land.
“On lifting people out of poverty, there were setbacks due to resource shortage because we needed to buy machinery like tractors, clearing the land, dividing it and encouraging people by giving them seeds like fertilizers and that cost money,” he said.
