Eight million jobs: Ngige’s word against NBS’

Labour and employment minister, Chris Ngige, excited the country with his statement while featuring on a television programme last Wednesday that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari had created eight million new jobs since it came on board.

According to the minister, “Government programmes have yielded a lot of fruits. If you go to the agricultural belts of Nigeria – Kano, Jigawa, Katsina, Anambra, Enugu, Ogun, Kebbi states – rice production created a new group of millionaires, the farmers. And there is the backward integration of the rice mills, jute bag manufacturers and the rest of them. A lot of jobs have been created, numbering about eight million now.”

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Without a doubt, job creation is the main job of the President. It is only citizens that are gainfully engaged that can meaningfully contribute to a nation’s development. The unrest and agitation in many parts of the country are traceable to the high rate of unemployment we have. Therefore, any effort to create employment opportunities is laudable because such effort will scale down unemployment in the country and, one way or the other, result in economic growth.

However, the information given by the minister that eight million new jobs had been created in the past 47 months is at variance with the information provided by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the government agency in charge of generating data for the country. According to the NBS, the number of unemployed Nigerians increased by 3.3 million to hit 20.9 million in the third quarter of 2018.

The bureau stated, “The total number of people classified as unemployed, which means they did nothing at all or worked too few hours (under 20 hours a week) to be classified as employed increased from 17.6 million in Q4 2017 to 20.9 million in Q3 2018. Of the 20.9 million persons classified as unemployed as at Q3’18, 11.1 million did some form of work but for too few hours a week (under 20 hours) to be officially classified as employed, while 9.7 million did absolutely nothing. Of the 9.7 million unemployed that did absolutely nothing as at Q3 2018, 90.1 percent of them or 8.77 million were reported to be unemployed and doing nothing because they were first time job seekers and have never worked before.”

The NBS had earlier reported that unemployment rate in the country rose for nine consecutive quarters from the last quarter of 2014 to the last quarter of 2016. The rate went up consistently from 6.2 per cent in the last quarter of 2014 to 14.2 per cent in the last quarter of 2016. That means though the unemployment rate started climbing before the advent of the present administration, the rise did not relent for the first one and a half years of this government.

In a report released in June 2017, NBS stated  that “There were a total of 28.58 million persons in the Nigerian labour force in Q4 2016 that were either unemployed or underemployed compared to 27.12 million in Q3, 26.06 million in Q2 and 24.5 million in Q1 2016,”

The report further stated: “In Q4 2016, the labour force population (i.e. those within the working age population willing, able and actively looking for work) increased to 81.15 million from 80.67 million in Q3 2016, representing an increase of 0.6 per cent in the labour force during the quarter. This means about 482,689 persons from the economically active population entered the labour force during the quarter, that is, individuals that were able, willing and actively looking for work. The magnitude of this increase between Q3 and Q4 2016 is smaller when compared to Q2 and Q3 2016, which recorded an increase of 782,886 in the labour force population.”

The agency also stated that there was a decline of 977,876 in the number of persons in full time employment within the same period, representing a decrease of 1.8 per cent vis-à-vis the preceding quarter. Which means although there were no new job opportunities, many people who had been employed also lost their jobs.

It also said, “The number of underemployed in the labour force (those working but doing menial jobs not commensurate with their qualifications or those not engaged in fulltime work and working for few hours) increased by 1,109,551 or 7.0 per cent, resulting in an increase in the underemployment rate from 19.7 per cent (15.9 million persons) in Q3 2016 to 21.0 per cent (17.03 million persons) in Q4 2016. This is an increase of 1.3 percentage points between quarters 3 and 4 of 2016, and shows a steady rise in the rate since Q3 of 2015.”

While the determination of the present administration to create jobs is well known, it is doubtful if the result from the efforts is as gargantuan as the petite minister would have us believe. Creation of eight million new jobs will markedly deplete the nation’s unemployed army in a manner that cannot be unnoticed. Eight million new jobs, where are they? Eight million is the population of Gombe, Taraba and Yobe states put together, according to the 2006 census figures or the size of Kogi, Kwara and Nasarawa states. Are we saying if a population the size of three states in the country suddenly disappears we will need a minister to bring this to our attention?

Despite acknowledging him as a politician, it did not occur to me that Senator Ngige, who trained and practised as a medical doctor, a profession given to precision, is also given to exaggeration.