Way back in history, one of the major problems of Nigeria was to get the required number of trained individuals to fill the over-whelming vacancies existing in both private and government establishments. For example, after independence in 1960, the nation gave special priorities for under graduate studies such that, the few established universities were provided with befitting facilities to equip the students with all that is necessary for the kind of training that will benefit the employment needs of the nation at that time. These were the days when graduates were given cars after graduation and would also receive multiple employment letters which they had to choose the one that best suited them.
The situation in the country now is quite contrary to what used to be in those days. Today, unemployment has become not only a major sector in Nigeria but also a lucrative business to invest in. While some of these investments (in the unemployment sector) can be said to be genuine and, somehow, benefitting on the part of the unemployed, others are not. Rather, they are various ways device to exploit or feed on the sweats of the suffering unemployed youths. For example, few months after I finished my service year in 2007, I discover many fake employment agencies which are operating in Nigeria. Their terms of operation involve creating mushroom offices and stationing a few staff there. These staff registers their customers (unemployed graduates) for a certain fee, collect Curriculum Vitae (CVs) from graduates promising them jobs. The conditions, sometimes, include clients forfeiting their first salary after helping them to secure a job. In some occasions, after getting a reasonable number of unemployed youths to register with them, they vacate the office and leave no trace of their new address. Sometimes, an unknown employment body will advertised for lucrative positions using the names of some of well paid multi-national corporations in Nigeria. After CVs have been submitted electronically, text will be sent to ‘shortlisted candidates’, inviting them for interview on a specified date. In such text, individuals are required to bring a certain fee for one thing or the other.
Another way which even the Nigerian government is guilty is the selling of employment forms. Candidates are, very often, cajoled into buying forms for positions that they are not fit to apply. For example, government establishments like National Eye Centre, Kaduna and National Examination Council (NECO) have sold employment forms to unemployed Nigerian youths during their employment exercises. In both cases, people wonder why a government must collect money from the unemployed to process their application forms for jobs that were not actually given but to a few numbers of persons. The gains are quite much and government is, in a way, benefitting from this too. A government establishment in this way can advertise for 68 jobs, and sell 18,000 forms, at an average price of N2, 000. This amount is quite affordable for poor suffering families to source for. The worst is that, sometimes a fake employment agency will use a government website to advertise jobs which are non-existent. In Kaduna, last year, some individuals used the Kaduna state website to advertise for UN positions. After they succeeded in gathering over 3,000 unemployed graduate and sold a number of forms to about one quarter of the population, luck ran out of them as they were identified as scammers.
Considering all these, it can be said that unemployment is a big sector in Nigeria to invest in. Recently, a national unemployment body called Unemployed Youths Association of Nigeria (UYAN) started operating in the country. Such association, to my opinion, is a time bomb that Nigerian government should defuse before it finds appropriate means to explode. Job creation can easily defuse this time bomb and make such associations baseless. Until Nigerian government look into this, the nation shall soon join her contemporaries in the North African (Egypt, Tunisia, and indeed Libya) to address unemployment issues in a tough way.
*** Art in Disguise ***
