According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), unemployment rate in Nigeria 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. It later rose from 16.20 in the second quarter of 2017 to 18.80 in the third quarter of that year. However, youth unemployment fared worse than that as it climbed up to an all time high rate of 33.10 per cent at the end of the third quarter of 2017, from 29.50 per cent at the end of the second quarter.
Youth unemployment is a major challenge in Nigeria because every year close to four million young persons graduate from the various tertiary institutions in the country without any concrete provision for their absorption into any of the nation’s sectors. According to available statistics, just about 200,000 (0.05 per cent) of the almost four million fresh graduates produced annually are able to secure good jobs. Four, five and even six years after graduation with a good result, many Nigerian graduates are still roaming the streets in search of the ever receding employment opportunities. It is the hopelessness and helplessness of their situation that drive many of them to crime and other vices. The nation’s rising youth unemployment rate is the major fuel for the insecurity situation the country is currently enmeshed in. Criminality in the country has gone hi tech because many of those engaged in it are highly educated.
Similarly, quite a number of young Nigerians regularly embark on the dangerous venture of voyaging through the desert or the Mediterranean Sea to cross to Europe in search of greener pasture. Many otherwise brilliant young people are stuck in one detention camp or the other abroad after being arrested for getting into those countries illegally.
The current administration, just like the ones before it, has come up with various programmes meant to scale down the high unemployment rate among the nation’s teeming youths. One of such is the Youths Entrepreneurship Support (YES) Project, which is an intervention programme of the government through the Bank of Industry (BoI), to empower youths with take-off loans for businesses of their choice. The scheme is intended to create about 36,000 jobs annually.
According to the BoI, a participant under the scheme could access up to N10 million loan which is repayable between three and five years. The loan attracts a single digit interest rate. Applicants must, however, present NYSC or higher education certificate as collateral to qualify for the loan with two external guarantors.
Another is the Accelerated Agricultural Development Scheme (AADS), which is managed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The scheme aims to create 360,000 jobs annually by training and empowering youths between the ages of 18 and 35 who are interested in agriculture. The government hopes to, through this intervention, employ and train 10,000 youths from each of the states in sustainable and profitable activities along the agriculture value chain.
The N-Power programme is a creation of the government targeted at job creation and empowerment of young Nigerians between the age brackets of 18 and 35. The scheme is divided into two categories; graduate and non-graduate.
The graduate category, also known as the N-Power Volunteer Corps, is meant for graduates who are between 18 and 35 years of age. It is a paid volunteering programme of a two-year period. The volunteers undertake their primary tasks in identified public services within their proximate communities in one of four areas; N-Power Agro, N-Power Health, N-Power Teach and N-Power Tax.
The non-graduate category has two programmes; N-Power Knowledge and N-Power Build. Through these programmes, young Nigerians are trained to build a knowledge economy equipped with world-class skills and certification to become relevant in the domestic and global markets. According to the government, about 200,000 beneficiaries are currently enrolled in the N-Power scheme.
While all of these interventions are laudable, their impacts have been minimal because, as observed by a former Director General of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), Alhaji Muhammad Nadada Umar, “The unemployment challenge is so bad in the country that even if two million people are given jobs on a quarterly basis, it will still not salvage the situation.”
Lesson from abroad
High rate of youth unemployment threatened to shatter the achievements of Mr Tony Blair when he was the British Prime Minister. He had to find a way round it or risked being roundly condemned as an ineffective leader. So, he came up with a strategy to widen opportunities for job creation and wealth generation, especially in areas not originally considered critical to employment generation. The administration came up with the Creative Industries policy in 1997. The government followed this up with the establishment of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which identified 13 creative sectors in the United Kingdom.
According to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), creative industries “have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property.”
Prime Minister Blair was clear in his mind about what he wanted to achieve with the promotion of the creative industries when he said he was looking at evolving a nation which would place higher premium on brains rather than brawn and encourage creative people to use their talents and skills to build great enterprises that would meet the needs of the twenty-first century. With this declaration, the government gave recognition to vocations, on which not much premium was hitherto placed, and put structure in place to ensure that those engaged in them were not shortchanged by the system or intermediaries.
Not only did this intervention result in the creation of new jobs, it also boosted the gross domestic product of the country.
Many experts are of the view that embracing and promoting creative industries could significantly reduce youth unemployment in the country and boost the economy.
Speaking along this line, a creative industries scholar and Dean of the School of Media and Communication at the Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos, Dr Ike Obiaya, said many young Nigerians will migrate into gainful employment if the government should put the right structure that would make the creative industries thrive in place.
He explained that many countries were already latching on to the opportunities offered by creative and cultural industries to solve youth unemployment.
Expatiating on the creative industries sectors as expounded by the British Department of Culture, Media and Sport, Obiaya named them as advertising, architecture, arts and antique markets, crafts, design, designer fashion, film and video, interactive leisure software (electronic games), music, performing arts, publishing, software and computer services, television and radio. He said each of these sectors has great potentialities for job and wealth creation. “There is no end to the opportunities in each of these sectors if the enabling environment for them to thrive is facilitated by the government.”
Corroborating Obiaya’s position, Austen Osokpor, in a 2015 study on the creative industries, posited that “creative industries helps in creating jobs and promoting exports and thus contributes to the growth of the economy.”
He added that since the government liberalized the broadcast industry, which is a sector of the creative industries, the capacity of the sector to generate revenue has increased just as the number of people employed by the industry has soared.
According to him, “Broadcasting contributed over N940 billion to gross domestic product in 2014 and currently employs almost 18 million people.”
He continues, “Private sector investment in the industry has created thousands of new jobs. Other auxiliary services which complement broadcasting have also been positively affected. What is obvious is that advert agencies have witnessed expansions so as to handle the myriad of commercials to be aired on the various radio and television stations.
“Another economic impact of private broadcasting is in the area of revenue derivable from the exportation of locally produced programmes.
“Just as the NTA and other public stations have been broadcasting acquired foreign programmes, so also the private stations could, with time, export their locally produced programmes to other African countries. This could become a significant source of revenue to government and the private operators.”
Another creative industries sector that contributes significantly to the economy is the film industry known as Nollywood. In the 2013 GDP rebasing exercise, Nollywood contributed 1.2 per cent to the national economy. According to Al Jazeera, an international broadcast organization, Nollywood is worth $5 billion and makes more films than Hollywood in the United States of America but less than India’s Bollywood. As stated by Emeka Mba, former Director General of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), the Nigerian film industry has estimated average yearly earnings of $250,000,000 and a captive audience of about 600 million Africans as well as several millions more in the Diaspora. Mba says Nollywood, being in the information economy, is benefiting from the trend which sees knowledge and creativity fast becoming powerful engines driving economic growth, while creating profound implications for international trade and development.
According to Kolawole Kuddus, Creative Director, Kola Kuddus Couture and a former Lagos State Coordinator of the Fashion Designers Association of Nigeria (FADAN), the nation’s fashion industry is worth about $10billion. This is evident given the contribution of 0.47 per cent of the industry to the GDP. Although there are no figures from the National Bureau of Statistics on its employment generation, there is no doubt that the fashion industry generates quite a number of employment opportunities both in the formal and informal sectors.
Another sector of the creative industries that is doing very well is the computer and software services. When Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook visited Nigeria in 2016, his first port of call was the Co-Creation Hub located at Yaba, Lagos State where he interacted with programme developers, social entrepreneurs, young technologists and others. He also visited Andela, a Nigerian company that trains developers as well as Afrinolly Hub, where he held a session with actors, film makers, singers and producers. That was an endorsement for the nation’s creative industries by one of the richest men on the globe.
The government has also come to recognize the importance of the creative industries as a strong stimulant for economic growth, wealth creation and employment generation.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, while speaking at a conference organised by his ministry last year on the creative industries, said, “This administration attaches a lot of importance to the creative industries. This is in line with its cardinal programme of diversifying the economy away from oil.”
He added, “The creative industries contributed 84.1 billion pounds Sterling to the British economy in 2014. It also contributed $698 billion to the US Economy, according to a 2015 report. So, Nigeria cannot afford to be left behind; hence, we are ready to explore and exploit the new oil.”
However, experts are of the opinion that while the government is willing to explore the opportunities in the industry its approach may deny the country of the industry’s full benefit especially the employment generation aspect.
While many Nigerians who are in the creative industries are talented and skillful, talents and skills do not automatically translate into wealth; not until they are commoditized, a process through which creativity and skills are turned into products that others are willing to pay for. Even at that, commoditization does not fully guarantee wealth creation for the talented or the skilled unless the creative product is access-barred from unauthorized people, while access is granted those who are willing to pay for it. This is known as intellectual property protection right.
According to Obiaya, while the government has done a bit about increasing the access of those in the creative industries to financing, the major challenge is the protection of their intellectual property from unauthorized deployment and sale.
Intellectual property protection stimulates creativity because the assurance of maximum reward from the product of an intellectual effort serves as fillip to the creative to do more. Creativity thrives in an environment where intellectual property protection is guaranteed. The confidence that there is protection for one’s intellectual property buoys creativity and, by extension, results in more wealth generation.
Kenneth Himma, in a 2006 paper entitled, The Justification of Intellectual Property: Contemporary Philosophical Disputes, says that intellectual property protection is important for three reasons. The first is that progress is recorded when new things are invented. The second is that protection of new creations encourages further innovation, while his third reason is that that intellectual property protection results in economic growth. But the reverse would be the case where intellectual protection is weak.
In a 2015 study conducted by a student of Pan-Atlantic University’s School of Media and Communication to investigate the hindrances faced by Nigerian fashion designers in protecting their designs from unauthorized usage by registering them with appropriate authorities, it was discovered that none of the professional 60 designers spread across five states of Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Kwara and Kaduna, had any intellectual property protection for their designs. The implication of which is that anyone could copy the designs, made money from same without the original designers being able to do anything to stop them.
The reasons advanced by the designers for not getting protection for their designs were varied. While some of the designers said they had never heard of intellectual property protection for designs, some said they did not believe that intellectual property was applicable to designs. Some others said they had never contemplated seeking intellectual property protection for their designs because of their conviction that the laws could not be enforced in the country. They added that since law enforcement agents had failed to enforce the regular laws of the land, there was no way they would be able to enforce any copyright. Some of them asked about what had happened to those who pirated films and books.
A few of the designers said they had made attempts to get intellectual protection for their designs but were discouraged because of bureaucratic bottleneck instituted by those in charge. One of the examples given by this category of respondents was that every aspect of the process was centralized. They claimed that to get anything done about copyrighting a design or getting a trademark for it, the designer had to get to Abuja, the capital city. They also said that despite the location of offices of the Federal Ministry of Trade and Industry in state capitals, nothing with respect to patenting designs could be done at the state capital. Those who said they made attempt to get to Abuja for the purpose of registering their designs said the attitude of ministry officials as well as the unduly long-winding process involved was a de-motivation for them. Some of the designers described the cost of registering designs as prohibitive.
But the backbone of the creative industries is in the protection of intellectual property. Therefore, the unwillingness of designers to protect their intellectual property would impact negatively on employment and wealth creation by that sector of the industries. Wealth is created in the creative industries when products of the industries are protected from unauthorized users. Wealth is generated when those who make use of such products are made to pay for them.
But when practitioners in a sector of the industries are apparently not cognizant of the importance of taking this route to secure products of their creativity and ingenuity, it spells doom for the sector. It means the sector would be generating wealth and creating employment at a level far below its capacity. It also means that whatever the fashion designing sector of the creative industries has accomplished is just a fraction of what it is capable of doing.
Commenting on this, Obiaya said, “If the government wants the creative industries to thrive and serve as an avenue for job creation, it would do well to remove every bottleneck that may hinder operators in the industry from patenting their creations. Patenting or copyrighting designs should be something that could be done at the push of a button.”
He added that the government should also emplace a structure that would facilitate the growth of the creative sector so that more young Nigerians would benefit from its employment generation potential.
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