A RECENT study by the Federal Bureau of Statistics places unemployment rate in Nigeria at 20%. Gainful employment for the majority implies the presence of a pool of national human capital engaged in jobs that provide material and psychological security to the many. That does not exist in Nigeria. Nigerian roads are flooded with mobile traders many carrying products worth less than five thousand naira (N5,000) and chasing elusive buyers as rows of cars pass by. Nigeria’s street hawkers would have been one of the wealthiest groups in the society if physical struggle and physical exertion were the ultimate avenues to wealth. They struggle more than anybody but earn the least, if they earn anything at all. Additionally, rural areas are store houses of youth unemployment and idleness. That must change if political leaders of post-50 Nigeria intend to depart from their prevailing lackluster performance to a path of progress.
From my studies of entrepreneurship in the Nigerian manufacturing sector, I sincerely believe that Nigerian manufacturers and their foreign counterparts are resilient in the midst of a harsh business environment. But the industrial or manufacturing sector has not been fully harnessed to create more opportunity for a greater pool of gainfully engaged human capital. On the latter note, there is limited tendency, among indigenous and foreign entrepreneurs, to invoke ‘creative destruction’ known to generate the technological innovations that expand employment.
Ministers and commissioners of industry come and go yet industrialization of Nigeria operates haphazardly. Some of the ministers, commissioners, bureaucrats and technocrats don’t do anything, what more doing something of note. They leave the ministries and the industrial sector as they were when they took office or some even leave them in worse situations than they met them. Because the industrialization process in Nigeria is rudimentary, slow and needs focused attention, it is tempting to suggest an independent Ministry of Industry at the federal level especially; in which case the present Ministry of Commerce and Industry should be split. The premise being, let there be an industrial policy to which a sole Federal Ministry of Industry, and its counterparts in the states, should focus attention. But splitting the current Ministry of Commerce and Industry will not solve the problem given the leadership and managerial failures that pervade both big and small public agencies in Nigeria.
The mode of selection of incumbents of ministerial positions is one, among many, of the reasons for the lack of progress in federal and state ministries and the apparent incompetence of their ministers. First, the principle of federal character and state zoning processes oftentimes do not emphasize competence in the appointment of officials. Second, the general pattern of making appointments is that the President or Governor sends names of potential cabinet to the Senate or State House of Assembly for so called screening without indicating the ministries to which the appointees would be deployed. If the President, Senate, and Houses of Assembly want appointees to be held accountable for their performance, their prospective portfolios and ministries must be stated before they appear for screening or vetting, More importantly, each appointee must present a position paper on his or her knowledge of the ministry or agency, previous and present problems, failures and successes of the agency, and the path to which he or she wants to take the ministry or agency for a better performance in the future. Take the Ministry of Commerce and Industry for example.
A prospective minister of Commerce and Industry should know about the interrelationship between commerce and industry; the past and present status of industrialization in Nigeria; the situation of industrialists; past and current strengths and weaknesses of the sector; and what previous administrations did or did not do well, or did not do at all. The prospective minister or commissioner should indicate to where he or she wants to take the industrialization of Nigeria or a state within a stipulated time, and what exactly he or she needs, and will do, to achieve those goals. Most importantly, what he or she will do to enable the industrial sector perform the role that its counterparts have historically played in other countries namely to be the source of gainful employment to many citizens.
A position paper presented by an appointee to a relevant committee of the Senate or a state House of Assembly will enable the screeners to ask specific questions and perhaps lead the prospective official to identify more areas of fruitful action. This is on condition that the screening bodies (Senators and members of State Houses of Assembly) know what questions to ask, can be imaginative enough to know how to make the sector move forward, or can invoke their knowledge as educated people to task the prospective official to aim higher for the benefit of the country. Nigerian legislators should observe confirmation hearings by U.S. Senators or State Congresses.
You will see that in most cases U.S. politicians do their homework on how much appointees fit or do not fit their prospective jobs before they undertake the confirmation process. Strong leadership by an astute, knowledgeable, imaginative and courageous Minister or Commissioner of Commerce and Industry after a substantively rigorous confirmation process followed by regular performance appraisals by the National Assembly or their state counterparts will help the incumbent work to broaden and deepen industrial entrepreneurship, diversify the economy, create more gainful employment, and reduce the crowd of the disengaged human capital we find in hawkers, idle onlookers, and the unemployed in rural and urban settings.
The role of government in a free enterprise society should be to create the environment in which economic entrepreneurs make profits and citizens with labour power find gainful employment. By this principle, the private sector remains the major source of job creation in society. But political leaders in Nigeria have not internalised this principle. We once in a while hear or read about the federal government or a state government promising to create a certain number of jobs within a given time. For instance, a certain state government promised, and set plans, to create 10, 000 jobs in the state’s public service. Another state government approved the recruitment of more than 3000 workers into its local governments. These acts may be politically expedient but are not economically optimal.
Anyone who has studied work and workers in ministries and other government agencies in Nigeria will observe an extreme degree of idleness among workers. High employee activity or task intensiveness is observed only at the high echelons of the organisation such as the offices of ministers, commissioners and permanent secretaries. Many employees below these levels, including directors of units, exhibit low work activity and a high degree of idleness. Worker idleness is most blatant at the lowest levels of organisations where many workers sit in one room and do nothing from the beginning to the end of the working day. Some public service employees leave the workplace at will to run their personal errands.
The pervasiveness of the latter eventuates in what I long ago called “the culture of unexplained absence” where employees leave the workplace without their colleagues knowing their whereabouts. This high level of idleness demonstrates over-employment in the public sector. An overpopulated public sector emasculates work ethic because people are idle not because of poor work ethic but because they have no tasks to perform. State governments complain that most of their financial resources are spent on worker’s salaries at the expense of capital projects. This means that creation of government jobs by administrative fiat is unsustainable. Occasional creation of thousands of jobs by government will further bloat the already bloated public service.
By implication, political leadership should rather direct its efforts at making and implementing policies that broaden and deepen the capacity of the private sector to frequently create jobs. Government should not undermine the domestic economy by importing everything, including dustbins, thereby ignoring indigenous entrepreneurs. Public-private partnership does not mean only joint ventures in tangible activity such as building roads, market stalls, etc. Though vicarious in its effect, the most efficacious form of public-private partnership derives from government policies that create demand, motivate supply, and expand and deepen entrepreneurship thereby enhance the capacity of the private sector to generate and sustain employment for the many.
• Professor Ukaegbu is of the Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL , United States
SOURCE:ngrguardiannews.com
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