Why Nigerian youths are unemployed – Presidency

By Lawrence Olaoye

Special Assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan on job creation, Mrs. Josephine Washima, yesterday explained that the wrong motivating factor for job hunt by Nigerian youths was responsible for their unemployment.

Washima, who spoke to newsmen at the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) headquarters, said most youths seeking for jobs have the get-rich-mentality as their motivating factor only to get frustrated when things are not working out for them as anticipated.

She also identified lack of continuity of government job creation activities and dearth of reliable data of those who are actually unemployed as the challenges facing the Jonathan administration in adequately addressing the challenge of unemployment in the country.

She said “we have to look at the attitude of the Nigerian youth towards employment. There was an argument sometime when people said a lot of Nigerian youths have issues of not being employed. People seek for job here maybe just because of the economic situation or their financial situation and that is the major motivational factor. And once finance is a motivating factor for getting a job, you are going towards failing.

On what the government has put in place to checkmate unemployment among youths, Washima said, “We have just partnered with the Unemployed Youths Multipurpose Cooperative Society. We cannot talk of reducing unemployment without knowing the exact number of people unemployed in Nigeria. And I don’t think the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has that data because data is different from statistics. Statistics is holistic, data is specific.”

She disclosed that her office has the mandate to generate an unemployment data. “Another key mandate of the office is to interface with all relevant government on policy direction of government,” she declared.

She added that the Jonathan’s administration has taken a measure of creating activities that would ginger job creation by ensuring the privatization of the power sector.

According to her, improved power generation and distribution would bring back the nation’s comatose industries capable of taking the nation’s youths off the streets.