Key highlights
- The National Directorate of Employment, NDE, mandated by the Federal Government yesterday, began the registration of unemployed persons in the 20 local government areas of Lagos State.
- The exercise will hold between April 17 and April 28, 2023, at the directorate’s office in Onike, Yaba, and the 20 local government areas in the state.
- The registration of unemployed persons would provide the federal government with the full statistics of unemployed persons in Nigeria and how to tackle it.
The National Directorate of Employment, NDE, mandated by the Federal Government yesterday, began the registration of unemployed persons in the 20 local government areas of Lagos State.
The NDE state office in Lagos, which announced the exercise, said it will hold between April 17 and April 28, 2023, at the directorate’s office in Onike, Yaba, and the 20 local government areas in the state.
Why this is needed
The unemployment rate in a country is a key macroeconomic indicator that measures the performance of any economy and helps to hold politicians and policymakers accountable for their promises.
Registration of those unemployed will therefore provide the country with data that will allow it to calculate the unemployment rate, which is the percentage of people in the labor force who are unemployed.
As a result, calculating the unemployment rate necessitates determining who is in the labor force. People in the labor force are either employed or unemployed.
This exercise is already being replicated in Abia state and Niger state and will hopefully spread to other states in the country.
What they are saying
The Lagos State NDE office, Coordinator Mrs. Serena Edward in a statement urged all unemployed persons in Lagos State to take advantage of the opportunity to register at their designated local governments to benefit from the program.
He indicated that the federal government wants to have complete data on the unemployed persons in the country to make adequate plans for them.
According to her,
- “The Lagos State Office of NDE has embarked on the registration of unemployed persons in the 20 local government areas in the state”.
- “The NDE is an organization set up by the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 1986 to curb mass unemployment and reduce the craving for white-collar jobs that are not adequate for the teeming number of graduates churned out every year”.
- “The state registration started on Monday, April 17, and ended on April 28, 2023. The registration exercise will hold at the NDE state office at 7 Barikisu Iyede Street Onike Yaba and the 20 local government areas in the state”.
How this may tackle unemployment
The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) was founded in 1986 in response to a compelling need for the formation of a permanent organizational framework to address Nigeria’s unemployment problem.
Since then, Nigeria’s unemployment rate has risen and is likely to deteriorate if nothing is done.
For example, the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) forecasted that the country’s jobless rate would reach 37% by 2023. According to the group’s 2023 Macroeconomic Outlook report, “Nigeria in Transition: Recipes for Shared Prosperity,” the country’s poverty rate will grow to 45 percent.
The think-tank group further said that economic growth will be subdued in 2023 due to strains on investment and low productivity in critical sectors.
“The services sector will drive economic growth, but this growth will not be strong enough to generate significant jobs,” it said.
Therefore, the registration of unemployed persons would provide the federal government with the full statistics of unemployed persons in Nigeria and how to tackle it.
The data collected would assist the federal government in effective planning for job creation.
Nigerians are hoping that this exercise would fulfill its promise of creating employment for the teeming youth population in Nigeria.
