Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, has reinstated the incumbent administration’s commitment to the creation of jobs for Nigeria’s unemployed.
He said this on Monday during the presentation of the Research Report of Course 29 of the National Defence College with the theme, ‘Creating Jobs & Opportunities for Africa’s Largest Youth Population.’
Osinbajo said that before any policy is instituted by the government, the proposed policy is questioned, especially in terms of the number of jobs it would create.
He added that it was the duty of the government to create an “enabling environment” in an economy as big as Nigeria’s.
He said, “If you recall, when the President was speaking concerning the budget in 2019, he mentioned that one of the critical things to do, concerning every Minister, is that, with every policy, we must state how many jobs to create.
“So, the key question that we ask regarding any government policy is how many jobs will this bring about, how many jobs it will create. And aside from that, there have also been several engagements with different policy bodies and ideas concerning job creation.
“The whole idea of creating jobs and opportunities especially in an economy this size, is that government’s involvement must be in creating the enabling environment.”
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Expanding further on the initiatives by the government to provide more jobs, Osinbajo said, “You are probably aware of the current effort of the Presidential Economic Advisory Council which was launched recently – the National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy, which I have the privilege of chairing its Steering Committee. This is another of the very broad plans of creating opportunities and more jobs.
“There are also other several job initiatives. The Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP) is a major plan of job creation, as a matter of fact, the major focus of our ESP is job creation – sustaining existing jobs and then being able to create other jobs.”
“The Food for Jobs programme which is an agricultural programme is a major initiative that has led to the identification of 5 million farmers, and these farmers are geo-tagged to their farmlands which is the first time that this has been done in the history of the country.
“They now have BVN numbers so that loans can be given to them and farm inputs as well. So, the Food for Jobs Programme is a major agricultural plan.”
