30 May 2018
All this job creation and recruitment announcements from federal agencies and parastatals are window dressing.
Most available positions if they ever exist are reserved for the privileged ones and those connected. The children of the poor will waist their small change in cyber cafe filling forms that no one will ever review.
Sometimes you will be alarmed to know how many people they plan to hire whenever you see these announcements, yet millions are wasted to place recruitment adverts on dailies.
Truth is government does not even have the capacity to hire. Capacity would have been increased if technology has been adapted in today’s civil service.
But the truth is that our civil service, armed forces and police are all analog. We still operate with file type writers, file cabinets, office flat file, movement of files from desk to desk at an age where technology controls.
The occupants and decision makers in most agencies some of them know no better and would never give room to those who can assist or offer to help. It is more of an attitude of if I can’t do it nobody will.
Governments all over the world do not really create jobs directly, rather governments make it possible through policies that favour job creators like private sector entrepreneurs to create jobs. If entrepreneurs can access soft loans that are guaranteed by government then they can open businesses and hire workers, or the government can choose a sector of priority, provide support infrastructure to enable sector-driven investments and market opportunities. Worldwide these are how jobs are created.
But go to federal ministry of labor, NDE, SMEDAN, and other related agencies saddled with job creation, their entire budget is training, training and training and you will never see what they are training for. Those trained in most cases, the training makes no meaning without adequate tools to engage.
Our country is just going round in circles and even in cases where we need seasoned professionals, we come up with zoning and federal character.
It is not late to get it right as a nation, Ghana, Botswana and Rwanda are classical examples of African nations who have gotten it right. For love of country, let us arise from these deep sleep and build a nation where our youths can be gainfully employed. Posterity will not forgive this generation if we fail to get it right.
Princewill Odidi
Is a Social Commentator, he writes from Atlanta
