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Nigeria’s economic challenges are many. But one challenge seems to be a manifestation of and a of other challenges and negative macroeconomic indicators. It is the challenge of unemployment and the denial or lack of opportunities for the expression of the right to work and to work under a decent and conducive environment.
Employment is inextricably linked to the ability of individuals and groups to satisfy the right to an adequate standard of living, to take care of education, food, health, housing, etc. For the government to plan and take steps towards the promotion of full employment, it must gather and analyse data and statistics on employment and unemployment. This discourse reviews the challenge of unemployment and agriculture, the need for agenda setting for the new administration and continuation of reporting on the subject.
The last Labour Force Statistics, Unemployment and Employment Report was for the fourth quarter of the year 2020 and released by the National Bureau of Statistics in March 2021. Ideally, data for this report should be gathered, analysed and released on a quarterly basis. But this is two years, five months since the last report. The long-time interval questions the rationale for this delay by the NBS. The NBS has been compiling and releasing other statistical reports but cleverly ignored this. This unexplained delay may be attributed to an agency avoiding to show the government of the day in bad light. Recall that the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari’s (retd) regime promised to create millions of jobs and to lift a hundred million Nigerians out of poverty. Since 2020, the key indicators that fuel unemployment have been on the increase; insecurity has increased, more factory closures, depreciating national currency, declining foreign reserves, massive deficit financing for consumption – not for capital and regenerative activities and the cash crunch challenges initiated by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Economic growth and expansion have not surpassed population growth to absorb new entrants into the job market.
The key findings from the 2020 report are frightening; 33.3 per cent overall unemployment rate and 22.8 per cent underemployment rate. The unemployment rate for the age group 15-34 was 42.5 per cent while underemployment was 21 per cent. Rural unemployment was reported at 34.5 per cent while urban unemployment was 31.3 per cent. Recent projections from experts, especially the global audit and tax advisory firm, KPMG, has projected that Nigeria’s unemployment rate will rise to 40.6 per cent as compared to 2022’s 37.7 per cent. The bare fact is that despite official refusal to acknowledge the trend, unemployment is increasing.
Against the background of the foregoing, it is imperative for the incoming administrations at the federal, state and local levels to prioritise employment creation and put it on the front burner of economic, political and social governance. The implication of this is that job creation has to be mainstreamed in a plethora of policies and governance interventions. The first sector to be addressed should be security of lives and property and its link to job creation especially in agriculture and rural development activities. The activities of terrorists, bandits, insurgents, etc. across the length and breadth of the federation has contracted the space for agriculture, self-employment and job creation. The economy cannot blossom in a state of insecurity.
The idea of value chain agriculture, from planting, harvesting, storage to value addition and possible finished products for local consumption and export has been the official mantra for the last couple of years. But it remained at the sloganeering level without translation into feasible projects and activities. The incoming administrations need to take this seriously in partnership with the local private sector. In every part of Nigeria, crops in which value addition post harvesting can increase job creation, exports, rural and urban income abound. From cocoa, palm tree, groundnuts, maize, cassava, shea butter, etc., missed opportunities should be converted to extant realities of new jobs and growth of local industries. For example, cocoa can be processed into chocolate, cocoa butter, beverages, pectin, animal foods, etc. Palm trees products are used for vegetable oil, lipsticks, shampoo, ice cream, detergents, soaps, margarine, chocolate, Nutella, baby formula, etc.
Value chain innovations must be linked to trade policy in terms of understanding and improvements in sanitary and phytosanitary requirements for export. These are measures applied to protect human, animal or plant life or health from risks arising from the introduction, establishment and spread of pests and diseases and from risks arising from additives, toxins and contaminants in food and feed. This will require training and retraining of operatives in the agriculture value chain/trade which will boost income from exports, increase demand for farm products, etc. Indeed, policies limiting the quantity of raw products that could be exported whilst providing finance and the right enabling environment for local value addition, a guaranteed domestic market, etc., will complement job creation in the agriculture sector.
To add more value and create jobs in agriculture will need linking up of research institutes and their research findings to off-takers and real famers that need these findings. This will involve a reform of extension services at the federal, state and local levels. Research agenda should no longer be driven by the experts in the offices whose extant research appears not to be demand driven. Agriculture research should be driven by the needs of farmers including small scale women and peasant farmers. There should be sufficient uptake of research findings that improve farm productivity as well the findings that add value and convert farm products to finished long lasting goods and services.
The concentric circle of local value addition implies that we may not need to import big tractors from automobile plans outside our shores. These could be produced by a collaboration of the research institutes and local automobile manufacturing and assembly plants. For small scale farmers who constitute the majority of farmers, they need small and medium equipment fabricated and maintained locally to increase their productivity. At the last check, Nigeria took a loan of over billion dollars for the supply of agricultural machinery while its manufacturing industries and research institutes were left idle and redundant.
Still on agriculture, animal husbandry cannot be a reason for insecurity, killings and unending crisis over access to land, water and fodder. Federal and state governments should agree on appropriate policy frameworks that see cattle and other animals reared in enclosures, sufficiently fed and processed to produce enough meat, milk and other bye products for local consumption and export. Four years of sincere investments in the subsector could create not less than a million new jobs in the downstream, midstream and upstream activities of the sector. It should become attractive that graduates of agriculture, animal science, veterinary medicine can find farm related jobs instead of the unending search for white collar jobs.
Job creation in agriculture in the long run has to be a product of the available knowledge, skills and competencies created by the educational system. Education is in dire need of reform to make it value driven, practical and problem solving oriented. Our polytechnics should revert to their original concept of training high quality technicians in various fields of human endeavor, from irrigation, automobiles, foundry, food processing and preservation, etc. These technical persons should be equipped with practical farm knowledge as well as knowledge in the automated modern environment of software, online applications and artificial intelligence designs. It is no longer reasonable for Nigeria to be importing fruit juice, vegetable oil, and processed foods that can be mass produced locally. Finally, there must be a monitoring and evaluation component, to keep track and provide timely reports on progress made and value added.