• Home
• Columnist
• Videos
• Artist
  • Musicians
  • Actors
  • Comedians
• Notable Nigerians
• Legend Dies
• Articles
  • Nigeria Articles
• Photos
• Submit Article

Author: Ejiofor Agada
Posted to the web: 8/10/2011 6:42:55 AM

For long Nigerians from all walks of life have debated on the preferred strategy to be employed in our collective quest to end, or at most, reduce unemployment to the barest minimum. From government schemes and programmes to multinational and global AID agency initiatives, the underlying effect of the various efforts over the years can best be described as 'pouring water into a basket'.It's not really a case of not identifying the problems. All the efforts made to curb unemployment in Nigeria has never failed to point to the fact that for a country of about 140 million, employment index of just above 20% is not just meaningful. Again itâ's not as if the various governments or global agencies are not committed to tackling unemployment. With the enormous financial commitments from these quarters since unemployment became a social menace in Nigeria, especially from the early 80s, itâ's obvious that financial action was not the problem.Even the attitude of the average unemployed Nigerian towards the various poverty reduction schemes has shown that they are ever willing to embrace anything that will better their lot. So we can rule out passive attitude of the people. If all these aspects that are essential in the fight against unemployment and poverty are not to blame for the persistency of this malaise, what then is wrong? Where are we getting it wrong?I've watched with utter dismay over the years as our so-called economic experts continue to posture and prance about their expertise and solution for unemployment and the attendant poverty situation it brings. The most disheartening part of this is the fact that all of them keep saying the same things, thereby succeeding in saying absolutely nothing.A situation where our efforts or ideas in curbing unemployment is not yielding dividends yet some countries are succeeding, one would've thought there will be concerted efforts made to find out why ours is not working. And when that's done, identify places where their own strategy seems to be working, and try to adapt or replicate them in our own clime.All this is pointing to the fact that if all the aspects mentioned earlier were not the reasons why our efforts at addressing this challenge seems to be going flat, then we need to rethink our ideas in this area. Part of our real problem happens to be the fact that our strategists and experts are all mentally fixated in the 19th century. As far as they are concerned, curbing unemployment requires government to employ everybody either into the civil service or other state owned agencies. This trend of course has led to a situation where all the arms of government have over-bloated and largely redundant staff strength perpetually agitating for higher wages. With limited resources accruing only from oil revenue, there's no way governments can continue to employ more.Another set of 'experts' even went as far as advocating poverty eradication schemes that relies on cash payment to identified indigent citizens. How far such a scheme will go is better left to the imagination. Even the recent call to introduce an unemployment welfarist scheme in the country is as best in the same boat with cash 'settlement'. This is because our economy is so skewed towards one major revenue source that it will be impossible to maintain the scheme, if for instance oil revenue slumps. So what's the solution?After reviewing trends globally, itâ's obvious that Nigeria's quest to win the war against unemployment and poverty must start with improving our gross national product (GNP) output that will lift the burden off our oil wealth. There's need to use our abundant arable land to spearhead agricultural revolution. I'm not talking of the Obasanjo-type Operation Feed the Nation scheme that didn't have a pattern. Or the white elephant agricultural projects of some state governors like Mr. Fayose of Ekiti or Peter Odili of Rivers during the 4th republic. What I’m advocating is a hybrid type of revolution embarked on in Malaysia in the 60s and 70s, combined with the patriotic focus of a self-sufficient nation as practiced by Israel even till today.Itâ's no longer news that Malaysia got the palm seedling that revolutionized their economic focal point from Nigeria. What is news is the fact that Malaysia decided long before they collected this seed on what they wanted to achieve with it. They decided that the objective is to make palm and its produce their major source of export revenue. Under the Palm Oil National Key Economic Area (NKEA) scheme, of the country, with the objective of increasing the productivity and income of the smallholders, the contribution of palm oil industry to the Gross National Income is expected to increase to US$59.4 billion, this year. The palm oil NKEA comprises of five EPPs for upstream activities, and three EPPs focus on downstream activities.By so doing, Malaysia was able to assure its citizens of not just revenue from a commodity that won't diminish in value, but also guaranteed employment from the plating stage to the industrial processing stage. It is so organized that all levels of workforce are accommodate in the sector: unskilled, partially skilled and the highly skilled labour are employed at every stage.On the part of Israel, though using only religion (Judaism) and national consciousness, the then young national in the 50s decided to utilize their large number of young people to defend their sovereignty and source of livelihood by engaging them in military and national economic service. Instituting a national service system, similar to our own National Youth Service Corp scheme, Israeli youths are constitutionally required to serve their country for a minimum of three (3) years in the military, agricultural and educational sectors. According to State information, 2.8% of the country's GDP is derived from agriculture. Of a total labor force of 2.7 million, 2.6% are employed in agricultural production while 6.3% in services for agriculture. While Israel imports substantial quantities of grain (approximately 80% of local consumption), it is largely self-sufficient in other agricultural products and food stuffs. In addition, Israel is one of the world's leading greenhouse food exporting countries. This trend means that 85% of young adults in Israel are reservists in the military and responsible for 80% efforts at feeding the country. So how do we replicate all these?Taking into consideration that the bulk of our unemployment challenge is for our army of unemployed and under-employed graduates, Nigeria can as well adopt an aspect of the Malaysian strategy and make it workable with the Israeli approach. By identifying an agricultural produce with current and future potential (like Cassava), Nigeria can use it to champion our own agro-based GDP push. Dedicating at least 100 hectares of arable lands in each of the six geo-political zones in the country to the cultivation of different species of this globally valuable crop, the country can project in geometric terms production outputs that can comfortably jack-up our GDP. In order to prevent the lackadaisical attitude of civil servants on this project, the farming settlements will be on PPP (private public partnership). The farming settlement alone, in addition to its attendant mechanical processing facility and export section, already guarantees employment like the case of Malaysia.By converting the prostrate NYSC scheme to a full military/national service scheme like that of Israel, Nigeria will not only be producing more patriotic youths that can also defend themselves from threats as well as serve as raw material for the military, the Corp members will have mandatory 2 or 3 years’ service in the farming settlements. Meanwhile core profession fields like Medicine, Law and Pharmacy can serve for one year and complete the second in their field of expertise. By so doing, the farming settlement is guaranteed personnel every year. These corpers will have the option of working in any of the sections of the cassava processing outfit after their mandatory service.If this is done, it is possible to hit US$30 million annually going by the demand for cassava for bio-fuel globally. After all we have the population, labour and arable land to make it happen. So I suggest that instead of the ‘big grammar’, our policy makers should look at this option and try it out. We’ll probably solve both our economic and food problems for good.Ejiofor Agada is a publicity and image consultant based in Lagos.