For the past decades, the rate of unemployment in Nigeria has continued to generate debate among Nigerians locally and internationally. Most people in the country’s labor force are either unemployed or underemployed.
This stat was one of the key highlights of latest unemployment rate released by Nigeria’s Bureau of Statistics. The stat shows that Nigeria’s unemployment rate has increased from 27.1% to 33.3% in the fourth quarter of 2020.
According to the Labour Statistics Report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently, the figure is 6.1% higher when compared to the 27.1% recorded in the second quarter last year.
“The number of persons in the economically active or working-age population (15 – 64 years of age) during the reference period of the survey, Q4, 2020 was 122,049,400. This is 4.3% higher than the figure recorded in Q2, 2020, which was 116.871, 186, ” NBS said.
A breakdown of the report shows that the total number of people with employment stood at 46.48 million while the underemployment rate was down by 20.6 percent at 15.91 million.
Nigeria’s population is said to have reached about 200 million people in Nigeria. According to National Population Commission, about half of the population is made up of youth, defined as individuals between 15 and 34 years of age. Unfortunately, as the youth population grows, so does the unemployment rate. In fact, unemployed youth numbered about 20 million presently.
First, in terms of age, younger youth struggle even more to find jobs. At least two-thirds of unemployed youth are between 15 and 24 years of age. And, in terms of gender, available statistics show that a majority of unemployed youth are female.
Unlike in the economically active population, the age group that accounts for the highest number under the labour force is the 25-34 age group. While females are more dominant under the active population, the reverse holds for the labour force, where males are more dominant with 56.72%, with females accounting for 43.28%.
The report also revealed that the unemployment rate among rural dwellers was 34.5%, up from 28.2% in Q2, 2020, while urban dwellers reported a rate of 31.3% up from 26.4%.
Several factors may be responsible for the exponential raise in unemployment rate in Nigeria. There is a high population growth rate—3.5 percent per annum—which accompanies an already large national population of over 200 million people. In addition, deficient school curricula and poor teacher training have contributed to the failure of educational institutions to provide their students the appropriate skills to make them employable.
Since schools in rural areas are generally more deficient in infrastructure, teaching facilities and teacher quality than schools in urban areas, this may help account for the high growth in rural unemployed youth. In fact, some experts suggest that the major jump in rural youth unemployment could be due to poor performance in school
In addition, there is also a lack of vibrant industries to absorb competent graduates. This obstacle was in part caused by an infrastructural deficit and a debilitating structural adjustment program (SAP) implemented by Nigeria in the 1980s, which led to the closure of many industries and from which the country is yet to fully recover. It is also well-known that the unemployment situation in Nigeria has been aggravated by flawed and inconsistent public policies on employment.
Successive governments in Nigeria have over the years introduced several measures to nip the problem of unemployment in the bud. Reason being that, the issue has become an issue of significant public concern from the era of military regime. Part of the initiative introduced during military regime to address this challenge was a reaction of the government to draft unemployed youth to public programs such as Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) and the Directorate of Food, Road and Rural Infrastructure (DIFRRI), which provided immediate and direct jobs to participants interested in agriculture.
Intervention programs such as Poverty Alleviation program, SURE-P, YOU-WIN, Npower, among others were also introduced by civilian regime to address the problems of unemployment in the country.
However, these public policy programs have had a mixed impact on unemployment in the country. While a number of intervention programs did address critical needs, others failed to address the issue of unemployment. The management and administrative oversight of the programs has been weak and sometimes problematic, perhaps because of multiple authorities (federal, state and local government agencies) managing the programs. Some have been known to expend more money than is necessary or at least failed to justify the amount of public money devoted to such programs.
Since it is unclear to what extent any given intervention may have reduced unemployment rate in aggregate, it may be more helpful to think of effective policies as those which have delivered on their stated objectives. The sustainability of a program could also be considered an indicator of success.
Analysts say that, the problem of unemployment in Africa’s largest economy and most populous black country in the world is unlikely to get better soon. The World Bank predicts Nigeria’s flailing economy is set for its worst recession in four decades as the effects of the coronavirus pandemic continue to manifest. Nigeria has been badly hit by the near total shutdown of the global oil economy, given its dependence on the commodity as its biggest revenue source.
Bleak economic growth and the rise in unemployed Nigerians will only compound the country’s long-running problem with lifting citizens out of poverty. Despite sustained high oil prices in the 2010s, Nigeria overtook India in 2018 as the country with the most people in extreme poverty.
Findings show that some of the problems associated with unemployment in Nigeria include widespread poverty, youth restiveness, high rate of social vices and increased crime wave. Furthermore, if the unemployment problem is not addressed, apathy, hopelessness, and revolution might be imminent. From the foregoing, there is the need for urgent intervention in the sensitive sectors of the economy such as power, industry, and agriculture in order to create employment opportunities.
