”
He added that so long as Nigeria, which
is the sixth largest oil producing nation on earth, continued to face an
intimidating youth unemployment rate with over 40 million of the
population jobless and hopeless, so long must intellectual exchanges
continue to be on the front burner of national discourse. According to
Kalu, “the logic is simple: if we don’t get our youths productively
engaged during daytime, they will surely keep us busy and sleepless
during the night time.
The upsurge in crimes such as
kidnapping, armed robbery, cultism and other violent crimes are, to a
very large extent, directly attributable to joblessness,” the two-term
governor of Abia State submitted. Kalu further said Nigeria was writhing
in the throes of devastating unemployment, adding that though the
National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) pegged the number of unemployed
Nigerians at 39 million, such figure could only have been a conservative
estimate.
He said, “in the last 14 years since the
advent of democracy, our unemployment rate has seen a dramatic
escalation. Between 1999 and 2007, our unemployment percentage jumped
from 8.7 percent to 23.9 percent.” Quoting the World Bank’s 2009
unemployment assessment of Nigeria, Kalu said, “in 2009, the World Bank
published a report which showed that Nigeria had about 40 million
jobless citizens which was about 28.57 percent of the population,” even
as he said that unofficial sources believed that the number of
unemployed Nigerians could be over 50 million.
Kalu said "he strongly believe that we
have to do a lot more in tackling corruption if we must rise
successfully to the challenge posed by unemployment. When needed
resources are not judiciously put to the public cause, we will continue
to harvest the monster of unemployment."
According to Kalu, “this is also a
conservative figure, given our tardy and unreliable record-keeping
process. “We have many Nigerians in the villages, small towns and cities
who are not captured in the unemployment index. What this frightening
reality tells us is that a third of our huge population estimated at
over 170 million, is roaming the streets jobless.
This state of affair portends a
frightening time bomb,” he added. On the possible danger of unemployment
rate in the country, Kalu said the nation had seen the dangers inherent
in untamed youth unemployment in other parts of the world, positing
that such could happen in the country. He further said Nigerians had
borne witness to how countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen,
Greece and others, unraveled like a castle of sand dunes. Kalu added:
“Indeed, the mass uprisings that exploded in 2011, the Arab Spring, are
direct consequences of the neglect of that critical factor in good
governance.
The Arab Spring was unquestionably a
youth uprising against unemployment, harsh economic conditions, social
injustice, despotism and tyranny. It was the revolt of the youth against
intolerable living conditions in the affected countries. “When you have
a huge chunk of virile and robust youth rotting away without jobs
or prospects, are we not laying landmines that will ultimately blow up
in our faces? “In Nigeria, no one can say that we have not been
sufficiently warned about the dangers of not aggressively tackling the
upsurge in mass unemployment, especially among the youths. Never in the
history of this country has kidnapping been as rampant as it is today.
From the young to the old, to even the
elderly, no one is safe from the onslaught of daredevil kidnappers. From
the high and mighty to the lowly and humble, everyone is game for these
marauders. “The upsurge in kidnapping in our land should worry us all.
There is hardly any month you do not hear of kidnap cases. Of course,
there is a correlation between youth unemployment and kidnapping.
From the stories told by kidnappers’
victims, many of those who now see kidnapping as a meal ticket are
youths between 22-30 years old. In some instances, even 18-year-old
youngsters have been recruited into the evil enterprise.” Kalu said the
intractable challenge must be confronted squarely and Nigerians must
prevail in that endeavour. The scourge of unemployment, according to
Kalu, could only be confronted with aggressive job creation schemes,
adding that it was an urgent priority that could not wait for tomorrow.
“It is my strong view that it is better
to create jobs for the army of the unemployed youths than to spend our
huge resources cracking down on youths who have turned to crimes because
of the harsh economic climate,” Kalu stated. In his remarks, President
Goodluck Jonathan, noted that good governance was central to everything
else, without which no other thing would work. Jonathan who was
represented by the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, added that
good governance had been the driving force of the current transformation
agenda of the Jonathan administration.
The president said for a very long time,
Nigeria had had governance deficit, which the nation had admitted.
According to Maku, “that is why Mr. President has now made it a priority
to put attention in improving the quality of governance. And Mr.
President is doing this by looking at certain issues,” he said.
Reviewing the book, Professor Joseph Mba of the Strategic Business
School, Lagos, said the author drew from sociology, journalism,
psychology and practical entrepreneurship to discuss in a rich, simple
and practical manner, the unemployment situation in Nigeria, the
challenges and effects of youth unemployment, simple and small business
the youth could engage in.
He added that the author provided in the
book, inspiration and motivation to Nigerian youths to shift their
mentality from government dependency to self-dependency, from focus on
white-collar jobs to commitment to self-employment.
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