Nigeria and ILO’s unemployment prediction

One of the scariest predictions this year has come from the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The organisation has projected that the global unemployment rate would rise in 2016 and 2017. It also predicted that despite falling unemployment in some developed economies, new analysis shows the global job crisis will exacerbate in emerging economies including Nigeria.
According to the ILO estimate, global unemployment in 2015 stood at 197.1 and likely to rise to 199.4 in 2016, even as it noted that significant slowdown in emerging economies coupled with increasing decline in commodity prices is having a dramatic effect on the world of work. We are equally alarmed at this prediction and call for concerted actions by the authorities to tame the unemployment monster in the country to avert any future crisis.
There is no doubt that the level of unemployment in Nigeria is astronomical, especially among the youth population which some estimates put at more than 65 percent. Overall, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) put the economically active population or working age, comprising persons within the age range of 15 to 64, at 103.million of the 170 million populations.
Several factors are being blamed for the prevalence of unemployment in Nigeria. This includes the high population growth rate of 3.5 percent per annum, policy inconsistency and corruption. In addition, deficient school curricula and poor teacher training have contributed to the failure of educational institutions to equip students with the appropriate skills to make them employable.
In addition to these supply factors, there are insufficient and vibrant industries to absorb competent graduates, a development caused in part by an infrastructural deficit and debilitating structural adjustment programme (SAP) implemented in the 1980s, leading to the closure of many industries and from which the country is yet to fully recover.
Recently, public policy has encouraged the youth to undertake entrepreneurship, which can make them create employment for themselves and become employers of labour. However, in the end, the industrial sector must also expand to create opportunities for them. For this to happen, industrial expansion must be based on available local resources in agriculture and solid mineral exploitation as well as value chain activities in these two sectors. The development of infrastructure, particularly electricity, will provide the necessary boost to any meaningful approach towards expanding industrial production space and creating employment for millions of job seekers.
It bears repeating that Nigeria needs to do something urgent on the satanic level of unemployment, particularly for those with lower or no skills, as well as those in the high level skills. A population of 170 million has a potential to add to the Gross Domestic Product(GDP), if the highly skilled products of the education sector are employed.
It is generally recognised that a vibrant population that is not productively engaged may be tempted to divert its energy towards criminal and other unsociable activities to the detriment of the society. The reserved army of the unemployed in the economy is too large.  It remains a time bomb, and it is in our collective interest not to allow it to explode.