Peter Obi, a presidential aspirant on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and former governor of Anambra State, has congratulated the Nigerian workforce on 2022 Workers Day via his Twitter handle.
“I congratulate all Nigerian workers on their Workers’ Day celebration while emphasising the importance of upholding the beautiful virtues of diligence and hard work,” the tweet said.
Furthermore, Obi urged the Nigerian government to aggressively support micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSME), which are the engines of job creation, so that they can effectively contribute to lowering the unemployment rate, as is the case in other countries.
The former governor added that no country can grow economically with a 35percent unemployment rate, which, when combined with underemployment, equals 55percent. That equates to 60 percent of unemployed Nigerians being youths—a nation’s most valuable asset.
Read also: Peter Obi – Final chance to cure Nigeria’s hypocrisies
Businessday had reported in an analysis of the latest NBS unemployment report, that a third of Africa’s most populous nation’s 69.7 million-strong labour force either did nothing or worked for less than 20 hours a week, making them unemployed in 2020. Another 15.9 million were underemployed because they worked fewer than 40 hours per week.
A high unemployment rate in a country like Nigeria, with the economy described as stagflated (a combination of high inflation and slow economic growth), means that poor Nigerians will become poorer in real terms, and the middle class will thin out.
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