By Rotimi Ogungbola
Beneath Nigeria’s unending unemployment crisis
lies typical corruption: the incessant decline of civic virtue
particularly among Nigeria’s political and economic elite which has
become intrinsic. Generally, in recent decades, many nations have been
confronted with tough economic challenges leading to increased
unemployment; however, Nigeria’s ‘economic crisis profile’ is noticeably
different in many ways among other nations since it’s tightly married
to incompetence, corruption and thorough mismanagement over the decades.
Interestingly, every administration comes with its own ‘economic growth
blueprint’ but none has been practically successful even though they
appear fine on graphs. This failure is so severe that it has attracted
several local and international economic diagnoses, as well as
commentaries and solutions proffered by independent and government hired
economists among others, but the solutions remain insufficient to
revolutionize Nigeria from deep economic mess, such that will
practically reduce unemployment and the ever peaking inflation. More and
more confusion is obtainable in this sector and not until a veritable
ethos of social responsibility is restored can there be a meaningful and
sustained economic recovery in Nigeria.
During an economic crisis, any reasonable national government should genuinely search for policy actions that can quickly deal with rising unemployment and declining output. Also sincere, visible and essential infrastructure investments are identified as key tools in the economic and policy debate to fight unemployment - in the case of Nigeria, where many small scale businesses have been frustrated to shut down because of poor electricity supply; businesses generate power themselves on high cost. Infrastructure development is key because of the direct and short-term labour effects on sectors that have been greatly affected by our economic crisis. Furthermore, construction of network based infrastructure, such as good transportation routes and broadband networks carry substantial spillovers in terms of improving efficiencies and stimulating innovation in the production sector of any national economy; this explains why several governments such as United States, Germany, Australia among others have decided to increase their investment in infrastructure, such as the construction of roads, bridges, power and telecommunications.
Currently, unemployment in Nigeria among other economic issues is highly discouraging and it has led to other social vices as well as increased poverty level, psychological injury as result of the breakdown in social contacts and isolation from the world of work, loss of responsibility, identity and respect which the position at work ensures, loss of purchasing power, etc. The causes are not far fetched as clearly stated; however, if the government remains weak and inactive on matters that matter such as growing unemployment, it exposes our nationhood to more dangers that will be added to the existing ones. Essentially, people have to survive, and their survival is based on economic engagement in the society, the onus of creating opportunities for citizens to contribute to the economy while they make a living lies on the government- policies and reforms must favour masses engagement in the economy. Beyond painted economic graphs displayed as blueprints by unpopular economists hired by the government, government lies about figures, playing with the masses emotions with ephemeral ideas and empty statistics- government should be thoughtful enough to put in place relevant measures that will reduce unemployment to the minimum at the shortest delay, importantly, as a way to reduce social vices in Nigeria.
Rotimi Ogungbola is a a Post Graduate Student at the Department of Religions, University of Ilorin.
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