While in traffic along the Fatai Atere Road one evening, a motorist was moved by the scene of a young man who dozed off in his wheel barrow, just by the roadside.
The barrow-pusher, who carries heavy loads for a fee at the Ladipo Motor Spare Parts Market in Mushin, Lagos, including fairly-used motor engines, gearbox and other parts, was exhausted working all day and could not resist nature despite the noisy market environment.
On that same road, the motorist almost knocked down a sachet water hawker who was running after a potential customer in a commercial bus that moved as traffic eased. It was the return of the traffic that saved the young female hawker from being knocked down.
Of course, if earnings are to be determined by the number of hours or how hard one works, then the likes of this barrow-pusher, hawkers and others who engage in strenuous jobs should have been millionaires.
Yet, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said that the barrow-pusher, the sachet water hawker and all others in the informal sector are gainfully employed.
With the ‘gainful employment’, according to the NBS new data, unemployment has dropped to 4.1 percent, from last quarter 2022 5.3 percent, a figure that many are contesting its authenticity.
But those who work very hard and earn little do not see that as being gainfully employed, rather hustling for survival.
Same applies to many graduates who due to lack of good jobs are engaged in menial jobs to survive.
Akunne Ezemdi, a 23-year-old female tricycle rider, popularly called ‘keke’, is disappointed that the NBS data captured her as being gainfully employed when she struggles amid intimidations and extortions from touts and police to meet daily delivery of the tricycle a church member bought for her under hire purchase.
“I am not gainfully employed because anything can happen to my keke and that will be the end of the road.
“There are days the touts or police will not allow us to work, rain can disturb us, and other emergencies can happen to stop us from working anytime of the day. So, I am not gainfully employed,” the tricycle rider on the Cele-Okota-Ago Palace route in Lagos, insisted.
Read also: NBS unemployment data ignores reality
Ochuko Isekpe, a university graduate who operates an open point of sale (PoS) shop, said the NBS should ask for the meaning of gainful employment as all roadside businesses are just for survival and not for sustainability.
“My mates who work in the formal sector, who earn from N300,000 every month and who don’t need to run away with their goods when Lagos KAI team invades or from touts are those that are gainfully employed.
“How much does the NBS think people make in the sun? We suffer in the sun and that is not gainful employment,” Isekpe said.
The unemployed graduate, who is surviving on commissions from PoS transactions, decried that the informal sector in Nigeria is the worst hit by the current economic realities in the country as low purchasing power, lull in business and multiple taxation combined to make their daily toils less fruitful.
“You cannot group a PoS operator, hawker and their likes as being gainfully employed. I don’t know the ground on which the NBS based the categorisation. The reality of the informal sector is that everything is informal including earnings because you can wake up and shops are closed, task force and touts decide how you work and emergencies often happen that will make you close for the day without earnings. So, it is unjustifiable to say I am gainfully employed until I get a job at the NBS,” Isekpe said.
Gideon Asaluka, a lawyer and recruitment expert, noted that the NBS got it wrong in its description of gainful employment as those in the informal sector are simply unemployed if you go by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) guidelines.
According to him, one needs to have a sustained income that is commensurable with one’s input and that is taxable before one can be said to be gainfully employed.
“Gainful employment is one that the beneficiaries do not want to leave in a hurry because the earnings and conditions of service are worth their inputs.
“But 70 percent of those in the informal sector barely earn daily wages. It is even worse in Lagos because the informal sector pays several levies that leave them working for the tax masters and government agents,” Asaluka said.
Considering the strong labour laws that have ensured favourable working conditions and good earnings in most European countries, Samuel Onikoyi, a Nigerian academic in Belgium, argued that Nigeria is a peculiar country with peculiar unemployment challenges and using the International Labour Organisation’s guidelines or standard to determine who is gainfully employed or not is wrong and will misdirect policymakers.
“The essence of NBS research and data gathering is to help policymakers and government with data and information required for improvement on existing conditions, adoption of better trends or sustainable developmental models.
“So, no matter the number of hours of work 40, 20 or one, most people in the informal sector in Nigeria work all day, all week, all month and all year with little to show for their efforts because of the harsh conditions, unfriendly environments they operate in- the multiple taxation, intimidation and the impact of the harsh economy generally.
“This category of the informal sector finds it difficult to make ends meet and cannot be said to be gainfully employed,” Onikoyi said.
Speaking further, Onikoyi said that with the 4.1 percent unemployment rate, the NBS is telling the government that unemployment is no longer a challenge.
He decried that the NBS impressive percentage signals gains and will misdirect the new government in its efforts at addressing the soaring youth unemployment in Nigeria.
“It is deceptive to say that the informal sector is gainfully employed. You have to further categorise the sector to identify those who are truly gainfully employed and not the hawkers on traffic, food vendors and those whose daily earnings cannot provide three square meals for their families.
Read also: Most employed Nigerians work less than 40 hours a week — NBS
“It is by grouping these very low-income earners as gainfully employed that the NBS was able to declare Nigeria’s unemployment rate at 4.1 percent. It is ironic that the agency had put unemployment at 33 percent in the last quarter of 2020. So, what magic has happened to improve employment in the country, especially in the eight years of the last administration where many businesses collapsed due to the harsh economy,” Onikoyi said. Same views were shared by Yemi Kale, former Statistician General of Nigeria, who condemned the NBS 4.1 percent employment rate in a recent interview.
For the former NBS boss, who is now a partner at KPMG Nigeria, the most important point of data is to give policymakers the tools they need to understand the problems, proffer solutions, and monitor the impact of those problems, rather than adding to the poblem with contestable data.
However, the NBS is insisting on the authenticity of its report, the informal sector is also insisting that most people in the sector do not have a job and not to talk of being gainfully employed.
