by Emeka Nwankwo
The Minister of State for Labor and Employment, James Ocholi, has revealed that the ministry has no information on the unemployed in Nigeria.
Ocholi, who stated this on Wednesday while speaking to newsmen in Abuja, also revealed that a firm has been contracted to capture the information of unemployed and underemployed Nigerians so as to facilitate a format for the social protection scheme and enable its take off.
“Before we got to where we are there is no data anywhere. There is no data of the unemployed. In fact, there is no data of the employed. It’s a bad situation but as we talk with you, we have experts working on the software and the various things which we have discussed with them on how to capture the data of the employed and the unemployed. And for those who are employed there are many who are in wrong places.”
“There are many who are in jobs they don’t even enjoy and who want to have a job better than what they are doing right now. There is a firm that we sort for and is working with the National Directorate of Employment, they have done a pilot scheme in Bwari and they have an office in Lobito Crescent right now and they are preparing for a mega scale on job profiling.”
The minister further noted that the Buhari administration is determined to provide a benefiting environment for the private sector to operate in as they are the main driving force in the area of job creation.
He also said that the ministry has written to the presidency, through The Secretary of the Federal Government, requesting for the ministry to take over the 76 federal skills acquisition centers in different states in Nigeria.
Ocholi revealed that beneficiaries of the scheme will be grouped according to specific categories so that graduates that will attend skill acquisition programs will be paid more than they earned as youth corps members.
“In other words, while being trained you earn something, that will bridge the gap between now and when they begin to open their shops and employ their own labor. Part of the N5,000 you hear may not actually end up being N5,000.”
“For instance, if a graduate chooses to go and acquire a skill and is taken to a centre for skill acquisition and he was earning N18,000 or N19,000 or whatever the range is as a youth corper, he can’t come back here and start earning that N5,000. It can’t sustain him.
For a graduate, he may need to get something higher to keep him or her while going through that skills acquisition centre but for the retraining program which we talk about teachers. The details are being worked out by the technocrats.”
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