A former Chairman of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, Alhaji Kawu Baraje, on Tuesday said the incoming administration of the President-elect, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, would create nothing less than 2.5m jobs within the first year of his administration.
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had said as of 2014, there were over 5.3 million unemployed youths in the country. This did not include those who graduated between 2014 and 2015.
Baraje, in an interview with journalists in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital on the sidelines of job creation summit, said Buhari’s incoming administration had perfected strategies to provide jobs for at least half of the unemployed youths in the country before the end of 2016.
He stated that unemployment was a critical issue in Nigeria, adding that the government would make job creation a priority.
Baraje said, “The incoming government has put in place a lot of programmes to jump-start our programmes in youth employment. No matter how hard we try, at least in the first one year, we cannot get all the unemployed youths in Nigeria to get jobs. But I can tell you that we can go beyond 50 per cent of the number of youths that are unemployed with the programme that we have put in place.
“The same thing goes for the economy. I am sure that the President-elect has talked about bringing in some stakeholders, players, experts and technocrats to work and fast-track economic recovery. I can assure you that though the expectations of people are high, the incoming government will try and meet the standards.”
The Secretary General of the National Union of Textile Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria, Mr. Issa Aremu, called on the incoming federal and state governments to make job creation a cardinal point of their programmes and policies.
He stated that the rate of unemployment in the country was very alarming and required a holistic strategy to address it.
He called for the revitalisation of industries; especially the textile industry, which he said would provide millions of jobs for unemployed people.
Aremu said, “People expect the incoming government to create many jobs for the teeming unemployed in the country. There are graduates who had left schools for four years without jobs.
“For instance, as many as 500 highly trained pilots are jobless in a country with hundreds of private jets. Some pilots are even reported to be driving commercial vehicles. There should be the revival of all industries to create jobs for the millions of unemployed youths.”
Copyright PUNCH.
