By Joy Baba-Yesufu
The Coordinator, African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL) Dr Chido Onumah has said Nigeria economy will be better if young people and the socially excluded are mainstreamed into the policy making frame work to ensure that their voices are factored into policy making.
He said the process should start will introducing young ones to the issues and challenges of public policy in this era of neoliberalism and how the Nigerian state can tackle poverty and inequality.
Onumah stated this in his welcome address, at a one day round table on ‘New Economic Policy Making for Equitable Growth and Social inclusion’ held in Abuja.
The AFRICMIL coordinator also said the country is currently facing many economic and social headwinds with the highest unemployment rate in the world with 33.3 of her employable population not finding work to earn income.
“The country has a youth bulge which means that many of its citizen are young persons who cannot find work to earn a living. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reports that about 45 percent of Nigerians are living in acute income poverty, 143 millions of Nigerians are multi dimensionally poor, lacking access to basic education and sanitation.
“These issues include removal of subsidies, unemployment, minimum wage and wages income, corruption in public procurement, social protection and social safety net, labor union and protection of workers’ rights, and access to basic education and health” he added.
Key note speaker at the occasion, Dr sam Amadi said government needs to formulate policies that will reduce inequality, include more Nigerians in the better life, improve health care, education, the rural areas, improve transport, mobility, housing. “I will say that development is transformation. You cannot think about development as only skyscrapers, few business people buying helicopters and private jets”
He said “we should focus economic development policy around the wellbeing of Nigerian citizens, it is about the people and economic policy should be made as if people matter. What that means is that if you’re going to talk about national budget, you should ask yourself what you want to achieve. You look at the problems, many Nigerians don’t have access to healthcare, education. You look at the multi-dimensional poverty report from the NBS that says about 134 million Nigerians don’t have access to barest sanitation. We are talking about people who have no toilets, no sanitation, no healthcare”
