If Nikolai Kondratiev, the Soviet economist and author of ‘The Major Economic Cycles’ (1925), were to be alive, maybe he would have been invited to Nigeria. At the instance of this writer, an invitation would have been expressly dispatched requesting him to conduct a study on the immediate and remote causes of our nation’s cycle of poverty in the twenty-first century with a view to making recommendations. It may be necessary to state why Kondratiev would have been the choice of this writer. Kondratiev in his thesis popularly referred to as Kondratiev Waves propounded cycle-like phenomena in modern economics comprising three phases, namely, expansion, stagnation and recession. Since Nigeria’s economy defies all known economic theories, however, the Soviet economist may find it difficult convincing Nigerians about the phase of his cycle-like phenomena in which the nation’s economy is currently operating. Without insulting the intellect of Nigerians and indeed that of our economists, especially those of international repute, a clairvoyant or professor of economics is not required to profess that the nation’s economy is in recession.
When an economy is in recession, unemployment is one of the many ugly symptoms. Unemployment is one of the major causes of poverty. Once poverty has started, it is likely to continue unless there is an intervention by government through sound economic policies. Otherwise, there is likelihood of a cycle of poverty from one generation to the other. The cycle of poverty in economics is popularly referred to as “development trap” when it is applied to countries. In other words, when citizens are forced to remain in poverty through no fault of theirs in a seemingly rich country with natural resources, development does not happen.
As long as there is an increase in unemployment or underemployment at individual, family and national levels, palpable poverty reigns from one generation to the other. Both poverty and unemployment are undesirables plaguing the nation today. No one will like to choose between these undesirable situations. However, over 100 million Nigerians are reported to be impoverished. What a big shame to our policymakers! Can’t we have policies that are capable of reducing poverty and unemployment in Nigeria? We can have such policies but the problem has always been lack of commitment on the part of past governments. Thus, as unemployment increases, poverty increases in equal proportions.
In Nigeria, just like any less developed country (LDC), people are trapped in poverty because of corruption, inadequate public health care, war, poor infrastructure, poor education system, hunger, unemployment, amongst others. If a family is caught between poverty and unemployment, members of such a family may be trapped for life unless there is an external intervention from government. When a family is poor, the children cannot have good education. They may attend government-owned primary and secondary schools but what about the cost of maintaining these children in school? What readily comes to mind is government scholarship. Perhaps, the same government expected to award scholarship has not paid salaries of teachers for a period of about six months. Currently, this is the situation we find ourselves in the country. We should remember that our nation has been in this ugly situation for over two decades.
While some Nigerians have canvassed for urgent resuscitation of the education sector at state and federal levels, it should not be forgotten that most students are from indigent backgrounds. A child from a poor family may be in the classroom but unlikely to afford a textbook to read. The consequence is manifested in poor Senior Secondary Certificate Examination results for so many years. Consequently, the chances are very slim that the son or daughter of a poor man will do well in SSC examination. If the situation was this bad between 1960s and 1970s, this writer and many of his contemporaries would not have been accomplished Nigerians today.
The concern of this writer is high level of unemployment among our youths. Do you know that the largest unemployed group are secondary school leavers popularly referred to as SS3 students? I empathize with most youths between ages 15 and 25 years in our nation who face poverty-induced challenges daily coupled with poor governance. Report shows that unemployment rate is high at about 41.6 percent for youths between ages of 15 and 25 years, while unemployed youths consists of 17 percent of males and 23.3 percent of females. Assuming that Nigeria has a population of 170 million, the youths constitute about 35 percent, which is 53 million of the entire population. The challenge before the government of GMB is how to transform Nigeria’s youthful population into highly skilled and competent citizens that are pro-industry.
What is expected in the next four years of GMB’s presidency are policies of skills development that will reduce unemployment and mitigate new challenges of poverty faced by Nigerian youths. It is not enough to produce more skilled youths but to find out what skills the Nigerian economy needs. With youth unemployment increasing daily, the nation needs to evolve a system that will provide skills requirements for employers of labour in order to develop appropriate strategies to close the gap. In any policy to be formulated on youth employment and skills acquisition, the following questions must be addressed: How will the nation prepare our youths for employment in the formal or informal sector? What are the skill gaps in industries? What sectors of the economy are in dire need of skills; and what opportunities are available for public and private sector partnership in the delivery of skills transfer? Any policy on youth employment and skills acquisition that is not yielding positive results in one year needs to be reviewed immediately. The era of “no alternative” to policies is gone forever as we live in a dynamic world. With over 100 million impoverished citizens, only time will tell whether this apparent cycle of poverty will start reducing gradually with the GMB regime.
MA Johnson
