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When you drive
around in your tinted air-conditioned car, I admonish you, my gentle
reader, to cast a quick glance at the young man with vacant eyes
wandering aimlessly under the baking heat. Try to imagine how you would
feel if you were in his shoes; how you spent seven years rather than
the expected four to earn a degree in Mass Communication due to strikes
by university teachers and the callous indifference of the authorities;
how you survived dangerous cults on campus; how Jihadists slaughtered
some of your colleagues in Jos during your NYSC year and how you
managed to escape only by the skin of your teeth.

This is the third
year since you completed national service. Some of the feared cultists
you used to know on campus have swaggered into posh, well-paying jobs
because their parents are Who-is-Who. You once contemplated armed
robbery, but then quickly asked the Lord to forgive you for even the
thought. Your baby sister has left college because your aged parents
could no longer afford to pay her fees. She is contemplating crossing
the Sahara into Italy as have nearly half the beautiful women of our
ancient Bini Kingdom. You are at your wit’s end — humiliated, bitter
and angry.

Unemployment is,
admittedly, a world-wide problem. A few weeks ago thousands of young
Spanish people marched through the streets of Madrid protesting the
lack of jobs. The spectre of youth unemployment continues to haunt
Europe, North America and the OECD countries. Indeed, youth
unemployment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries was a
major factor in the recent upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt that saw the
overthrow of corrupt tyrants. The root of the problem lies in the
global financial meltdown, dwindling growth, changing technologies and
competitive pressures from China and India. There is also the
inescapable fact of governmental incompetence.

We have to start
from the premise that access to decent and productive employment is a
fundamental human right. The duty of government is to create a sound
macroeconomic and institutional environment that ensures rapid
job-creation for the teeming millions of youths.

Economic science
makes it clear that growth is a necessary condition to ensuring
job-creation. But it is not a sufficient condition. Last year the World
Bank released its report on Growth and Employment in Nigeria that
showed that our economy was largely characterised by the phenomenon of
“jobless growth”. This is simply to say that some of the key sectors
accounting for quantitative growth in output – telecoms, energy and
banking – are capital-intensive rather than labour-intensive sectors.
Which is to say that their capacity to generate jobs is rather weak.

What we need is a
comprehensive employment policy with a clear roadmap and a rigorous
implementation strategy. The welfare of nations does not occur by
accident. It is the outcome of leadership and public policy. In 1945,
for example, when Clement Atlee and the Labour Party came to power,
they set out a clear strategy to achieve full employment and provide
universal access of all citizens to health, shelter and education.

Key to transforming
the economy and ensuring jobs is a development strategy based on
agriculture-led industrialisation. From Post-war Japan to South Korea,
Thailand and India, it is clear that an agrarian transformation is the
sine qua non to long-term sustainable development. Some 70% of our
people are engaged in rural agriculture, much of it of the smallholder
variety. The Green Revolution in Asia was anchored on boosting
productivity of the small farmer as the key to agrarian transformation.

Over the coming
years, the global demand for food will rise astronomically. We in
Nigeria still have abundant farmlands. We need to develop the farm
sector through deployment of appropriate technologies. Linked to this
is the creation of agro-allied industries that would enhance the value
chain of our products for domestic and foreign markets.

Linked to this is
the need to focus on SMEs and integration of the informal sector into
the mainstream of the modern economy. We need a set of incentives that
encourage entrepreneurship as an option to our youths. Critical support
by government will be needed in terms of access to credit, critical
about markets, training and skills development.

Ultimately, we have
to reform the education sector based on the principle of literacy and
education as a fundamental human right. Cuba was able to achieve 99%
literacy within the space of a decade. We can do the same. We have to
reform the school system while ensuring that our young people have
respect for the dignity of labour and the use of their own hands.

Science, technology
and engineering must be given pride of place in the curriculum. We can
also borrow a leaf from the German apprentice system that requires all
technical students to spend time in industry as part of the learning
process. This country needs at least 100 technical and vocational
training schools that will train builders, electricians and plumbers
who can become productively self-employed.

Next to power and infrastructure, job-creation is the most critical challenge we face.