Rising unemployment rate in Nigeria, which hit 13.3 percent in the second quarter (Q2’16) of 2016 and jumped by 1.2 million more people from 12.2 percent in Q1’16, and 10.4 percent Q4’15 according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), is drawing intense attention to the need to realign market demands of labour to its supply.
This sharp decline in employment generation in the first and second quarters of 2016 is strongly correlated to the weakening economic output within the period, where the Nigerian economy recorded a negative growth of -0.36 percent and -2.06, respectively, the NBS said.
Experts have blamed this on the inadequate link between education and the strategic development agenda of the governments at all levels, knowledge obsolescence and lack of retooling, unlearning and relearning of knowledge at all levels of education and uncontrollable growth in population, unguided development in educational expansion in response to social and market demand.
In the Q2’16, Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracted by -2.06 percent (year-on-year) in real terms. This was lower by 1.70 percent point from the negative growth rate of 0.36 percent recorded in the preceding quarter, and also lower by 4.41 percent points from the rate of 2.35 percent recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2015.
These twin macro-economic indices (spiking unemployment and contracting GDP) point to a slowing economy, reduced production, consumption and layoffs. To boost employment rates and get the economy back onto the path of positive growth, experts advocate a number solutions among which are a clear definition of talent and employability and clear Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) friendly policies.
“The employers’ side of the employability ‘deal’ is represented through the concept of ‘talent.’ In practice, talent management is recognised as a source of competitive advantage in the context of the current demographic trends and patchy availability of skills in home markets. Yet, the very definition of talent lacks rigour,” Allison Gilbertson, editor at the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management in the United Kingdom, said.
Lucy Newman, CEO, FITC Limited, a training, consulting and researcher who is also the vice chairman of the Managing the National Unemployment Challenge (MNUC), a Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) initiative, in a soulful lamentation, contended that government and policymakers might be talking to the wrong policy influencers.
“The other day I was somewhere and some renown policy influencers were speaking of how supporting big corporate will help the GDP. I was sad faced and silent. Some noticed my silence and asked my view, because I was the only female and one of the youngest,” she said.
She said “development is at base of the pyramid and no economy gets it right without deliberate and sustained interventions at the base, which is aligned, not random or duplicated. They were silent, and have clearly not thought about it. Meanwhile, some have written books on the Asian Tigers and Gramin Bank.”
