BY MAYOWA SAMUEL
The federal government has been advised against its proposed doctoring of unemployment figures by the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics.
Former Secretary General, Organisation of the African Trade Union Unity, Owei Lakemfa, expressed the view in a chat with The Point, insisting that doing so would not alter the reality that massive unemployment, poverty, inflation and hunger are ravaging the country.
He urged the federal government to rather focus on finding ways to tackle unemployment, economic recovery, so as to alleviate the sufferings of the people.
Recall that Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Public Affairs, Ajuri Ngelale, had recently disclosed during a television programme, that the government intended to change the way the NBS calculated unemployment figures in the country, even as he expressed dissatisfaction at the bureau’s non-capturing of many hardworking youths working in different micro, small and medium enterprises, shops and markets before arriving at the figures.
Ngelale’s statement was in criticism of the latest employment statistics of the country released by the nation’s official statistics body which revealed that Nigeria had over 23.1million unemployed citizens, representing an unemployment rate of 33.3 per cent as at December 2020.
However, Lakemfa, who also was Acting Secretary General of the Nigeria Labour Congress between 2011 and 2012, explained that, “The NBS is a professional bureau run by professional statisticians, but even if the government decides to interfere with the work of professionals by changing the way statistics are gathered and derived or replacing the head of the bureau and the people working there, it will not change the realities that there is mass unemployment, especially among the graduates and the youths; inflation is at its highest and people are suffering in this country.
“The bureau was established by the federal government in the interest of everybody, not to serve the interest of any particular government, government official or party. It is better for us as a country, to ensure that our institutions run without interference, especially from politicians, their spokespersons or representatives.
“Rather than dabble into the job of professionals, what the government needs to do is face reality and mobilise the citizenry to proffer solutions to our problems. Governments will come and go, but the reality will remain,” the labour activist insisted.
While another recent data by the NBS in collaboration with the World Bank revealed that 20 per cent of Nigerians employed at the start of 2020 lost their jobs to COVID-19, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, through his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, however, revealed that the Buhari administration, through the Economic Sustainability Plan, saved over one million jobs and prevented the closure of over 150,000 small businesses hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Lakemfa, in disagreement with the figure put out by Osinbajo said, “We cannot run a government based on propaganda. Nigerians cannot eat propaganda at the dining table; it is food they will eat. The government said it is going to create 100 million jobs. Out of these 100 million jobs, they should tell us how many they have created. Where are the jobs? It’s not even about whether you have fed one million.
“Even if you claim you have increased the minimum wage from N18, 000 to N30, 000, you will find out that it is grossly devalued. When the minimum wage of N18, 000 was introduced in 2011, a dollar was N160. Now one dollar is N575 and Nigeria is an import- dependent country. If you say a hungry man is well-fed, he knows you are not telling the truth,” he concluded.
