Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote has boasted of creating not less than 25,000 jobs with Dangote Cement Plc alone. While speaking at the official commissioning of the N85 million Chemical and Non-Metallic Employers Federation House (CANMPEF House) built by CANMPEF, Dangote said the operations of the cement company has spread to 14 other African countries.
According to the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Dangote Group, the cement company has 29 million tons installed capacity for cement production and expected to increase to 35 million by 2020 in the country.
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What you should know: Despite the job opportunities the Dangote Group has created, data proves that many Nigerians are still unemployed. The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had released the country’s unemployment report which puts the number of unemployed Nigerians at 20,927,648.
Year on year, the unemployment rate increased from 18.8% during the third quarter of 2017, to 23.1% in the same period this year. A closer examination of the report shows that this is the highest unemployment rate in Nigeria since Q3 2014 when the number of unemployed Nigerians was 7.27 million.
Since 2014, the unemployment rate in the country has significantly increased from 9.7% to 23.1%. Key extracts from the NBS reports are as follows:
- The total number of completely unemployed Nigerians increased from 17.6 million in Q4 2017 to 20.9 million in Q3 2018.
- Out of the 20.9 million unemployed persons as at Q3 2018, 11.1 million did some form of work but for too few hours a week (under 20 hours) while 9.7 million people did absolutely nothing.
- Out of the 9.7 million unemployed Nigerians, who did absolutely nothing as at Q3 2018, 8.77million were unable to work because they were first-time job seekers.
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- Out of the 9.7 million that were unemployed and did nothing at all, 35.0% or 3.4 million have been unemployed and did nothing at all for less than a year, 17.2% or 1.6 million for a year, 15.7% or 1.5 million had been unemployed and did nothing for 2 years, and the remaining 32.1% or 3.1 million unemployed persons had been unemployed doing nothing for 3 years and above.
- The economically active or working-age population (15 – 64 years of age) increased from 111.1 million in Q3, 2017 to 115.5million in Q3, 2018.
- The number of persons in the labour force also increased from 75.94 million in Q3 2015 to 80.66 million in Q3 2016 to 85.1 million in Q3,2017 to 90.5million in Q3, 2018.
- The total number of people in employment (with jobs) increased from 68.4 million in Q3 2015 to 68.72 million in Q3 2016 and from 69.09 million in Q3 2017 to 69.54 million in Q3 2018.
