Thursday, November 13, 2014
KEYE SPEAKS! 2015: Setting the Youth Agenda (2)
By Ewebiyi Keye James
Add BBN on 2BAFB965
The incident of March 16, 2014 represented a new low in government's policy programme. The tragic stampede that took place at stadiums where the recruitment exercise for the Nigerian Immigration Service was held exposed the backwardness and ineptnesses of Government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). What is even more worrisome is the fact that tax paying applicants had to part with N1,000 to be eligible for the scam called recruitment exercise. Or how would one explain recruitment for government jobs held in stadiums under shoddy conditions and the resultant death of 19 job seekers?
The appalling unemployment crises has turned a typical Nigerian graduate into a desperate and frustrated fellow willing to do all that it takes to secure a job that would at least give him three square meal a day. It is no news that a significant number of those who participate in the National Youth Corps Scheme (NYSC) are overaged. Ideally, graduates participating in the scheme should, according to its by-laws, not be more than 30 years old during their mobilisation.
According to the Nigerian Tribune Newspaper of September 7, 2014, Dr. Kunle Olajide, Publicity Secretary of the Yoruba Unity Forum blamed this abnormality on the high unemployment rate in the country. He said "The falsification of age by corps members is because of the massive unemployment in the country. They want to make sure that at least for their first post-graduation year, they are assured of an income, no matter how small. It is a shame but it is the socio-economic situation in the country that compels them to be fraudulent." This is truly not far from the truth.
As a 2012/2013 Batch B corps member in Kogi State, I had first hand interaction with overaged corps members many of who falsified their age to be eligible for the scheme for the sole purpose of earning N19,800 monthly allowance. Many of these overaged corps members would have settled for certificate of exemption if there were job prospects but the truth is that the first and second post-graduation years are at best job hunting years.
The hurdles of job prospecting has become much more compounded in the past few years with the growing commercialization of job recruitment by public establishments and minimal age ceiling by private concerns. Recruitment for civil service jobs have been outsourced by government agencies to recruitment agencies collecting service charge or application fees from millions of job seekers to conduct interview for applicants. This exploitation contravenes the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention No. 181 which covers the recruitment and placement in employment of workers by agencies of all categories of workers and areas of economic activity.
The Leadership Initiative for Transformation and Empowerment (LITE-Africa) condemned the NIS incident noting that it is against best employment practices as it violated the tenets contained in Nigeria's Labour Act and relevant conventions and resolutions of ILO Convention 181 guiding decent work and recruitment process as subscribed to by Nigeria. It also amounts to illegal extortion of jobless youth to enrich the pocket of government whose duty is to create enabling environment for youth employment in the country.
On the other hand, private employees no longer see anything good in overaged graduates. They have prioritized age over competence. In this day and age, a typical Nigerian job advert would read, "Applicants must be below 26 years old; have a minimum of 5 O' level credits (including English & Mathematics) at one sitting; have a minimum of second class (upper division) degree at first degree; have a Masters degree as added advantage; have 5 years work experience and professional membership of ICAN, ACCA etc." I beg to ask, how many Nigerian graduates can meet this qualification given the fact that the average age of Nigerian graduates is 26? This benchmark is unrealistic in a country where schools are shut down incessantly over industrial actions by workers among other crises in the education sector coupled with a one-year compulsory service to fatherland.
This unfortunate development has forced many bright and promising graduates to dump their dream careers and take up jobs that do not have any correlation with their courses of study inasmuch as it would put food on their tables. Or how would one explain a situation in which a first class civil engineering graduate takes up a bank teller position? What's the correlation? Many have had to take up jobs that belittle their personality and undermine their academic achievements. Contract staffing and slave wages have become conspicuous characteristics of our saturated labour market.
Efforts by Federal and State governments to address youth unemployment have remained poor and ineffective. Since the return to civil rule in 1999, successive governments have developed programmes and policies to reverse this ugly trend but they have only been able to scratch the surface of this hydra-headed problem. The current Federal Government, under the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P), has attempted reducing the unemployment rate by providing job opportunities to graduates of tertiary institutions through it's Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS), Community Services Scheme (CSS), Vocational Training Scheme (VTS), and Community Services, Women and Youth Empowerment (CSWYE), among others. But all these have not provided any serious cushion against unemployment. For instance, the GIS which started last year was only able to engage 50,000 graduates with 293 firms out of a total unemployed youth population of 11.1 million. The 50,000 interns were paid a meagre N18,000 by government as monthly stipend which can barely take them to the bus stop talk more of taking them home.
The Youth Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria (YOU-WIN) is another novel intention of the Federal Government but just like the GIS, it has not provided any significant or meaningful succour to millions of unemployed Nigerian youths. YOU-WIN is a business plan competition aimed at creating jobs by encouraging and supporting aspiring entrepreneurial youth in Nigeria to develop and execute business ideas with winners getting between N1,000,000 and N10,000,000 depending on their business needs. The National Planning Commission (NPC) in it's Mid-Term Report of the Transformation Agenda, May 2011 – May 2013 projected that by 2015, the program would have provided 40,000 to 50,000 new jobs. But the question to ask is how many of these new or existing businesses would be able to survive this hostile economy? Our economy has become so hostile that industrial estates in Lagos State are folding up; textile factories in the North are closing shop and multinationals are relocating their production base to neighbouring countries. No business can survive without a friendly economy which is only evident in adequate social and economic infrastructures with power supply being the most important.
...to be continued.
.jpeg)
EWEBIYI KEYE JAMES
Social Media Consultant and Youth Activist,
Lagos, Nigeria
07064981943
Keyeewebiyi@yahoo.com
@Keyestine
You can read the first part HERE
The incident of March 16, 2014 represented a new low in government's policy programme. The tragic stampede that took place at stadiums where the recruitment exercise for the Nigerian Immigration Service was held exposed the backwardness and ineptnesses of Government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). What is even more worrisome is the fact that tax paying applicants had to part with N1,000 to be eligible for the scam called recruitment exercise. Or how would one explain recruitment for government jobs held in stadiums under shoddy conditions and the resultant death of 19 job seekers?
The appalling unemployment crises has turned a typical Nigerian graduate into a desperate and frustrated fellow willing to do all that it takes to secure a job that would at least give him three square meal a day. It is no news that a significant number of those who participate in the National Youth Corps Scheme (NYSC) are overaged. Ideally, graduates participating in the scheme should, according to its by-laws, not be more than 30 years old during their mobilisation.
According to the Nigerian Tribune Newspaper of September 7, 2014, Dr. Kunle Olajide, Publicity Secretary of the Yoruba Unity Forum blamed this abnormality on the high unemployment rate in the country. He said "The falsification of age by corps members is because of the massive unemployment in the country. They want to make sure that at least for their first post-graduation year, they are assured of an income, no matter how small. It is a shame but it is the socio-economic situation in the country that compels them to be fraudulent." This is truly not far from the truth.
As a 2012/2013 Batch B corps member in Kogi State, I had first hand interaction with overaged corps members many of who falsified their age to be eligible for the scheme for the sole purpose of earning N19,800 monthly allowance. Many of these overaged corps members would have settled for certificate of exemption if there were job prospects but the truth is that the first and second post-graduation years are at best job hunting years.
The hurdles of job prospecting has become much more compounded in the past few years with the growing commercialization of job recruitment by public establishments and minimal age ceiling by private concerns. Recruitment for civil service jobs have been outsourced by government agencies to recruitment agencies collecting service charge or application fees from millions of job seekers to conduct interview for applicants. This exploitation contravenes the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention No. 181 which covers the recruitment and placement in employment of workers by agencies of all categories of workers and areas of economic activity.
The Leadership Initiative for Transformation and Empowerment (LITE-Africa) condemned the NIS incident noting that it is against best employment practices as it violated the tenets contained in Nigeria's Labour Act and relevant conventions and resolutions of ILO Convention 181 guiding decent work and recruitment process as subscribed to by Nigeria. It also amounts to illegal extortion of jobless youth to enrich the pocket of government whose duty is to create enabling environment for youth employment in the country.
On the other hand, private employees no longer see anything good in overaged graduates. They have prioritized age over competence. In this day and age, a typical Nigerian job advert would read, "Applicants must be below 26 years old; have a minimum of 5 O' level credits (including English & Mathematics) at one sitting; have a minimum of second class (upper division) degree at first degree; have a Masters degree as added advantage; have 5 years work experience and professional membership of ICAN, ACCA etc." I beg to ask, how many Nigerian graduates can meet this qualification given the fact that the average age of Nigerian graduates is 26? This benchmark is unrealistic in a country where schools are shut down incessantly over industrial actions by workers among other crises in the education sector coupled with a one-year compulsory service to fatherland.
This unfortunate development has forced many bright and promising graduates to dump their dream careers and take up jobs that do not have any correlation with their courses of study inasmuch as it would put food on their tables. Or how would one explain a situation in which a first class civil engineering graduate takes up a bank teller position? What's the correlation? Many have had to take up jobs that belittle their personality and undermine their academic achievements. Contract staffing and slave wages have become conspicuous characteristics of our saturated labour market.
Efforts by Federal and State governments to address youth unemployment have remained poor and ineffective. Since the return to civil rule in 1999, successive governments have developed programmes and policies to reverse this ugly trend but they have only been able to scratch the surface of this hydra-headed problem. The current Federal Government, under the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P), has attempted reducing the unemployment rate by providing job opportunities to graduates of tertiary institutions through it's Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS), Community Services Scheme (CSS), Vocational Training Scheme (VTS), and Community Services, Women and Youth Empowerment (CSWYE), among others. But all these have not provided any serious cushion against unemployment. For instance, the GIS which started last year was only able to engage 50,000 graduates with 293 firms out of a total unemployed youth population of 11.1 million. The 50,000 interns were paid a meagre N18,000 by government as monthly stipend which can barely take them to the bus stop talk more of taking them home.
The Youth Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria (YOU-WIN) is another novel intention of the Federal Government but just like the GIS, it has not provided any significant or meaningful succour to millions of unemployed Nigerian youths. YOU-WIN is a business plan competition aimed at creating jobs by encouraging and supporting aspiring entrepreneurial youth in Nigeria to develop and execute business ideas with winners getting between N1,000,000 and N10,000,000 depending on their business needs. The National Planning Commission (NPC) in it's Mid-Term Report of the Transformation Agenda, May 2011 – May 2013 projected that by 2015, the program would have provided 40,000 to 50,000 new jobs. But the question to ask is how many of these new or existing businesses would be able to survive this hostile economy? Our economy has become so hostile that industrial estates in Lagos State are folding up; textile factories in the North are closing shop and multinationals are relocating their production base to neighbouring countries. No business can survive without a friendly economy which is only evident in adequate social and economic infrastructures with power supply being the most important.
...to be continued.
.jpeg)
EWEBIYI KEYE JAMES
Social Media Consultant and Youth Activist,
Lagos, Nigeria
07064981943
Keyeewebiyi@yahoo.com
@Keyestine
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
No comments :
Post a Comment