The Federal Government on Thursday said that lifting the current embargo placed on recruitment into the federal civil service will not make a significant difference to the unemployment problem in the country.

Stating this position when he appeared at the ministerial briefing organized by the Presidential Communications Team at the presidential villa, Abuja, the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, said the strategy of the government is rather to improve the skills of Nigerians and empower them to be self-employed.

Recall that Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed had in October 2019 announced that the Federal Government would suspend employment as a means to sustain the 2020 budget, a position restated by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2020, blaming it on the advent of coronavirus.

Keyamo had been asked to reconcile the fact that while the government was battling to reduce unemployment, it continued to maintain an embargo on recruitment and replacement in the civil service.

He said: “I think your question assumes that the kind of employment want to create is in civil service. That’s not the idea of employment. All around the world employment, public services employment account for less than 1per cent of employment in the country.

“So, it will be very short-sighted of us as government, very myopic, very, like wrong game approach to thinking that we want to lift people out of poverty and create employment by opening up gaps in the civil service to employ people. How many are we going to employ for the 33per cent(unemployment rate) that we have now? So high.

“The unemployment figures are indefensible. The 33per cent was compounded more by the COVID scourge, the whole world is reeling from the COVID scourge. So, we need to react more innovatively to create employment.

“And for us, we are working very hard to ensure that we skill up Nigerians. The way to approach employment is to skill up the populace. That’s the way out, to encourage the small, the macro small and medium scale entrepreneurs, support their businesses, ensure that people are self-employed, skill them up.

“That’s what the N-Power is doing. In N-Power, whether you are a graduate or not, go and learn a skill so that you can be self-employed and feed yourself. Those are employment we are creating, those people who are skilling up.

“The journalist (questioner) is looking for this magical (employment) letter. You are hereby employed. You are put on probation for six months, after which you will be confirmed. That’s what that journalist is looking for. That’s not employment we are fighting for.

“That’s not the kind of employment we want to get to Nigerians, that magical letter from civil service. So, the only way to know that we have fought unemployment is that in the next 10 years, we print out 100 million letters. We want to skill up Nigerians, we want to empower them, support small businesses, empower Nigerians more so that they can be self-employed. That I think is the way forward and that’s our own focus as a government to fight unemployment,” he stated.

Keyamo said about N24, 000,817,800.00 has been paid out to beneficiaries under the 774,000 special public works scheme as of June 24, 2021. He said a total of 413,630 Nigerians drawn from rural communities and mostly itinerant workers were beneficiaries, as he noted that the scheme has achieved 60per cent success.

He explained that the initial delay experienced in the implementation of the programme was caused by incomplete registration, especially with bank verification numbers.

The minister maintained that despite his attempts to ensure due diligence in the implementation of the programme, some people tried to cheat the process by opening multiple bank accounts under a single BVN.

He said: “When we wanted to introduce the special social works scheme here in Nigeria, the President first approved the pilot scheme, because he thought, perhaps we needed to test run it to see what we can apply here. So, the first thing the President approved was that we should do eight states at that time. And not all the local governments just five, in selected states originally, that was in late 2019, then I just became Minister.

“So, we started implementation in January 2020 in eight states, we just started one month into the implementation when COVID struck. So, we could not actually complete at that time, the Federal Government released one-month stipends at that time to pay in those eight states.

“So, during the lockdown, we discovered that at that time, small businesses suffered the most, so many people could not go out to eke a living, especially those who depend on daily pay. The people that were worst hit by the COVID lockdown was the people who go out daily to market or bricklayers among others.

“So, the President was very concerned about this kind of people during the lockdown. He thought that If people don’t receive money daily, there’ll be a revolution. We had to quickly react and find them something to do.

“So, he said, look, this pilot scheme should be expanded. Let it cover all the states and all the local governments now quickly. It was a quick response by the President. He was also audacious about it. The President said 1000 per local government, not 500 not 100, but 1000 persons per local government, which comes to 774, 000, just so you know,” he said.

The minister further said: “So far, those we have paid have received their N60,000 for the three months. We saved so many lives across the country by this payment. Some used their own to buy a grinding machine. I just discovered a grinding machine costs about N45, 000.

“Because of this, I begged my people to give more women than men because women are caregivers, they will manage this money well. They will buy a grinding machine, for instance, every day they will making an average of N5000 or N10,000 grinding tomatoes, pepper beans, for people, part of which they will use to pay school fees or to feed the family. But the men will go on a drinking spree.

“We have helped to save so many lives because we discovered that some people in villages, go around looking for a loan of N25,000 for weeks, nobody will give them to add to their small businesses. Don’t forget that we’re not talking about our graduates here, we are talking of itinerant workers. This is surely going to reflate the economy.

“We have paid 413,630 persons out of the 774, 000. So, we’ve achieved about 60 per cent of the success rate and these are those who have received N60, 000 each. And the total amount we have paid out is N24 billion, actual monies given to Nigerians to put in their pockets for them to cushion the effects of post-COVID,” he explained.

(Tribune)

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