FG blames rising unemployment on crude oil theft
The Federal Government has attributed the menace of crude oil theft to the worsening unemployment situation in the country.
Dr. Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment, said this while declaring open the 8th Meeting of the National Employment Council on Friday in Abuja.
Mr Olajide Oshundun, the Head, Press and Public Relations, quoted the minister as saying this in
Ngige, who is the chairman of the council, said that oil theft has made Nigeria a mendicant nation, resorting to begging for survival.
According to him, this menace has hampered the efforts of the federal government towards creating jobs for the country's teeming young population.
"I am aware that you people know that we are at a very critical stage in our nation's life. We have economic problems all over the world, but our own in Nigeria is self-inflicted. Our main source of revenue is oil.
"But, in the oil sector, two things are happening. One, Nigeria is not meeting her production quota. Our OPEC production quota used to be 2.2 million barrels per day. It slipped down to 1.8 million barrels.
"Now, we cannot even produce the 1.8 million barrels." We are hovering around 1.1 million barrels per day, and they told us that some people are stealing our crude oil.
"This is a very serious matter because it has made us very mendicant." "We are now a mendicant nation, resorting to begging for survival," he said.
He added that the nation cannot continue that way because it has hampered efforts to create jobs for our teeming, youthful population.
The minister further said: "Some people were analyzing the situation and said that when we started the country, the white men came here and took all the jobs."
"We were seeing them with white shirts and ties, and the jobs became known as white collar jobs." Later, our own people started going to university and, after graduation, joined in the "white collar jobs."
"Our colonial masters left and bequeathed to us another group of colonial masters, which comprised the indigenous people."
`Those who took over from the colonial masters did not plan for tomorrow." Number one is that our population is growing uncontrollably.
"Our population astronomically outpaces our gross domestic product (GDP)." We are neither finding our youthful population white-collar jobs nor making arrangements for them to do blue-collar jobs.
"Blue collar jobs are the ones you do with your hands, applying skills," he said.
Ngige also noted that only a few blue-collar jobs were created in the transport sector, especially in rail and maritime, without producing indirect jobs to complement them, while the situation was made worse by foreigners.
He added that this was especially true for Chinese and other West African people who have taken over most of the blue-collar jobs.
He also blamed the overflowing joblessness for the youth restiveness all over the country.
"Unemployment is not confined to Nigeria, but our own is worse because in other climes, people are earning money from blue-collar jobs." Here, we have no blue-collar jobs for our workforce.
"We have polytechnics, but they are competing with universities for degrees." We see a polytechnic say it is awarding degrees. We have technical colleges that want to equate their certificates with degrees.
"Nobody is interested in having technical skills." Everybody wants to be drawing and designing in air-conditioned offices, which is what the average man does. The degree men are not supposed to be the implementers.
"The field implementers are the technologists and technicians, and in proper climates, they are very well paid and live decent lives," he said.
According to him, to reverse this ugly trend, there is a need for a handshake between the National Employment Council and the National Skills Council, which are domiciled in both the Federal Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Education.
He said this also comprised the ministries of industries and trade, works, power, science, and technology, and all other government creations, with a sense of urgency.
Ngige therefore recommended the incorporation of the Federal Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy into the National Employment Council, being that we are in a digital age, which makes for the creation of digital jobs.
He described digital jobs as the best way to absolve the bulging mass of youths that are now unemployed.
"We need to also look at NNPC and gas pipeline projects." Nigeria is doing two projects now: the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) and the one that transverses the West African Line into Morocco and extends to Europe.
"So, these are all ongoing critical infrastructure projects with a large number of jobs to be created from them," he said.
He welcomed the proposal for the creation of labor desks in the form of job synergy points in the ministries, departments, and agencies where needed in order to facilitate job monitoring and creation.
"We conceived the concept of labor desks for trade disputes, and that is why we started in the ministries and agencies that have a propensity for a lot of trade disputes."
"Now that this Employment Council is thinking ahead, you should also bring a proposal so that we can do reforms through the Ministry of Labor."
`This will ensure that we have job creation content in conjunction with the trade dispute aspect, in addition to managing strike actions," he said.
