by Oladele John Nihi

Your Excellency Sir, it’s my humble opinion that if there is a presidential directive mandating all federal government agencies both in the civil service, military and Para-military through the Head of Service of the Federation and Chief of Defense Staff to annually begin or start recruitment in all the federal parastatals same time, same charges for form (if needed) and aptitude test conducted same day so as to avoid duplication of applicants.

Dear Mr. President,

Your Excellency Sir, making this an open letter is the only effective option I’ve got in bringing this very important information to you therefore I apologize for whatever negative impression it might cause considering the numbers of open letters addressed to you in the last few months. It’s my sincere hope that this will not be considered as one of the many open letters but treated based on its merit and given deep thought for possible implementation. I will quickly go straight to the point which is the RATE OF UNEMPLOYMENT IN NIGERIA.

 

The unemployment rate can be defined as the number of people actively looking for a job divided by the labour force. Changes in unemployment depend mostly on inflows made up of non-employed people starting to look for jobs, of employed people who lose their jobs and look for new ones and of people who stop looking for employment.

From 2006 until 2011, Nigeria Unemployment Rate averaged 14.6 Percent reaching an all time high of 23.9 Percent in December of 2011 and a record low of 5.3 Percent in December of 2006 according to National Bureau of Statistics.

Unemployment in Nigeria, particularly in the form of graduate unemployment, has become pronounced in the last two decades due primarily to upsurge in the output from tertiary education and inelastic labour absorptive capacity of the Nigerian labour market for the services of university and polytechnic graduates. Some of the reasons for the failure and limited success of the policies and programmes are managerial incapability, effort duplication, unaccountability, low quality of training inputs, inadequate funding, policy inconsistency and poor governance, unwieldy scope of programmes and ineffective targeting of beneficiaries.

Using myself as an example, I graduated about 3 years ago from Kogi State University, Anyigba (B.Sc Hons. Political Science) with a good result and ordinarily my thoughts and belief was that, at least my parents can now be free of supporting me financially as I was already seeing myself working to at least solve my personal needs though I was not unaware of the fact that there are some graduates before me who had been home years without job and with even better result than mine but considering the fact that I am a hardworking guy and a hustler who is ready to do any job legal as my contribution to our dear country and more importantly considering beautiful reports we read on National Dailies of federal governments job creation, I was rest assured of securing a job.

It soon dawned that on my things are not as easy as it seems. Unbelievably, i  am still unemployed in spite of my struggle and hustling. I have applied for so many vacancies private, state and federal not leaving behind military and Para-military. I sat down in deep thoughts and this is what I feel Your Excellency can do to salvage this endemic ravaging our country.

 

RECRUITMENT PROCESS IN NIGERIA

Your Excellency Sir, the way and manner at which but state, federal and private organizations in Nigeria go about their recruitment is ineffective and calls for urgent restructuring. We have a situation where different federal government agencies and parastatals recruit at a staggered and unorganized way thereby creating ways for job manipulations who include top political office holders and heads of government agencies. This also is the case with state and private organizations. A good example is the banking sector where banks recruit at different periods in an unorganized manner, even the military and Para-military recruit at staggered and uncoordinated manner.

 

SUGGESTIONS

Your Excellency Sir, it’s my humble opinion that if there is a presidential directive mandating all federal government agencies both in the civil service, military and Para-military through the Head of Service of the Federation and Chief of Defense Staff to annually begin or start recruitment in all the federal parastatals same time, same charges for form (if needed) and aptitude test conducted same day so as to avoid duplication of applicants.

This directive can also be given to private organization for examples banks through the Central Bank Nigeria Governor for all banks in the federation to annually begin recruitment same time, same charges for form (if needed) and aptitude test conducted same day all over the country so as to avoid duplication of applicants.

 

It’s my point of view that if Your Excellency can fashion out ways to implements this suggestion, we will not only know accurately the number of successful employed applicants yearly, it will also go a long way in reducing unemployment and people getting job at their various discipline unlike what we have now where people work not on the basis of what they studied in school but on where they are connected and have the political backing leaving people with no such connection handicap yearly and every time.

 

I am also of the opinion that, while economic growth must be made employment intensive, all the economic players such as the government, the private sector, workers, private individuals as well as non-governmental organizations must pursue policies and programmes that would attain this objectives. Among the immediate, short and long-term measures to be taken are promotion of informal micro and small-scale sector enterprises; promotion of entrepreneurship culture through entrepreneurship development programme; accelerating the growth rate of the agricultural sector, linking education and training with labour market requirements; promotion of enterprise culture which will induce self-reliance, risk-taking, and a national environment which rewards effort and initiative; self-employment and curriculum re-engineering

Thank you Your Excellency for reading me.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.