Buhari, Atiku, like in the past, are making vague job promises

Despite the massive shedding of jobs in the economy over the last three years, where a record nine million people lost their jobs – and despite the doubling of the unemployment figure from 8.9 percent in the second quarter of 2015 to 18.8 percent Q3 2017, the main challengers for the presidency, Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar, have continued, like in the past, to make bogus promises of creating millions of jobs in their manifestoes and policy documents without going into specifics of exactly how those jobs are going to be provided and by whom.

In the Buhari’s APC abridged manifesto entitled ‘Next Level: We are all going higher’, the president promised to scale up job creation by 19.5 million in the next four years. A breakdown of the promised jobs includes: employment of additional 1 million N-Power graduates, skill up 10 million Nigerians under a voucher system in partnership with the private sector, 1 million additional jobs through the Anchor Borrowers Scheme, 1.5 million jobs along dairy, beef, hide & skin, blood meal, crops, 5 million jobs through agriculture mechanisation policy with tractors and processors, 700, 000 jobs in the tech and creative sector through provision of $500 million innovation fund and the training of youth for outsourcing market in technology, services and entertainment, and another 300, 000 jobs through up scaling the school feeding programme.

But the document is notoriously silent on the specific details of how the jobs are to be created. This new manifesto is a perfect replica of the 2015 manifesto where the president also promised to “make our economy one of the fastest growing emerging economies in the world with a real GDP growth averaging at least 10-12 percent annually”, and to create three million jobs annually, or as another policy document of the APC avers “to embark on vocational training, entrepreneurial and skills acquisition scheme for graduates along with the creation of Small Business Loan Guarantee Scheme to create at least 5 million new jobs by 2019”. The manifesto then was silent on specifics and strategies.

However, since coming to power, the economy has not grown above 2.5 percent. Indeed, Nigerian witnessed its first recession in 25 years under the administration and even after exiting recession, has not grown beyond 1.7 percent, far below the population growth rate of 2.6 percent, which is a key factor in the endemic spread of poverty in the country. Indeed, some months ago, the Brookings Institution declared Nigeria the poverty capital of the world with a record 87 million people living in extreme poverty and another 8,000 people sliding into extreme poverty on a daily basis.

Regardless, the government has been stubbornly trumpeting its own facts: that since coming to power in 2015, it has successfully lifted 10.073 million Nigerians out of poverty to prosperity (according to minister of budget and national planning Udoma Udo Udoma) and that it has created up to seven million jobs (according to Chris Ngige, minister of labour and productivity) with many of those jobs domiciled in the rice production sector where the presidency claimed the nation is almost becoming self-sufficient in its production.

However, the United States Department of Agriculture busted the government’s bubble when it released figures showing that rather than reducing, Nigeria’s rice import has increased and is projected to jump next year to 3.4 million metric tons, making the country world’s second biggest rice importer after China.

On his part, Atiku promised to “Target the creation of up to 3 million self-and wage-paying employment opportunities in the private sector annually, across all the economic sectors, including agriculture, manufacturing, MSMEs, ICT and Sports and Entertainment.” He also promised to create “opportunities for large corporates as well as for small farm holders and microenterprises to nurture entrepreneurs and create jobs.”

Unlike Buhari, though, Abubakar got some fundamental principles right by promising to first stimulate the growth of the economy by firmly committing to promote a “private sector-driven, competitive and open economy supported by efficiently run public institutions.” Only this can unlock the economy and enhance its capacity to provide opportunities for the economically active population to participate in the economy through wage or self-employment. It is also heartening that he has committed to the religiously pursue the active participation of the private sector in the economy through public private partnerships since government does not have the needed resources to provide infrastructure, and only the private sector holds the key to providing the millions of jobs needed to absorb the over 35 million unemployed and under-employed Nigerians and also absorb the over two million Nigerians entering the job market annually.

Having said that, and although the policy document lists the steps the aspirant will take to bring this about, the steps are desperately short of clear-cut, workable plans and innovative strategies on how to unlock these jobs across the various sectors of the economy. For example, in his plan on ‘what we will do’, he talks about skills acquisition, creation of incubation centres, clusters and industrial hubs and using a four-pathway agenda to job creation. The plans says nothing about the current jobs various sectors create, the untapped job-creation potential of the sectors and specific plans on how to open up new sectors or expand existing ones and give numbers to the jobs that could be created from each of those sectors. In this, Buhari’s plan does better than Atiku’s.

Besides, the plans of the frontrunners for the top job are so nebulous and difficult to pin down and track since they are mostly heavy on broad policies and not specific and detailed plans on how these jobs would be created. Like we have seen in the past, the government could easily claim to have fulfilled its promise by making some policy announcements or creating some agencies to implement the policies regardless of the number of real jobs that are created through those policies.

“It is difficult to see the innovation, freshness or what is spectacular of the Atiku’s plan to create 3 million jobs annually,” says Franklyn Ngwu, a senior lecturer in Strategy, Finance and Risk Management at the Lagos Business School and member, Expert Network, World Economic Forum, in an article in BusinessDay. There is need for clarification in certain critical areas that are central to the success or failure of the plan, the don concluded.

Jobs are central to the economic development of any nation. Economists have long established a link between the employment rate and economic growth. When citizens are gainfully employed and produce valuable goods and services, both the citizens, the economy and the society prosper and vice versa. And the first indices with which leaders are judged in advanced economies is the number of jobs created and how low the unemployment rate is.

If Nigeria’s current experience is anything to go by, they need to quiz the frontline presidential candidates for specificity on their job creation plans.

Christopher Akor