The Nigerian government on Wednesday, said it has approved the opening of employment and job creation portals for the unemployed Nigerians living in the country and in the Diaspora.
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents at the end of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Council Chamber, Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He said the council approved a portal called Nigerian Labour Exchange, NILEX, which will be domiciled in his ministry for employment and job creation.
He explained that the platform had not been developed over time and could not take stress of the number of people wanting to go into it, stressing that the digital platform was supposed to be used by employers on one hand and job seekers on the other.
He said, “The employers will come in and load the vacancy they have, the type of skill they want, the qualifications of people that can fit in there.
“Then the job seekers, those who are looking for job, graduates, non-graduates will register, put in the qualification, put in their skill and what you can do and then the two groups are matched. The employer can speak with a job seeker, via that platform.
“So over the years we have not been able to expand it. But on a bilateral, multilateral agreement now the funds are provided. So we are redesigning it, remodeling it, and then upgrading the infrastructure.
“Council approved that consultant also do that with a completion period of 12 weeks and with that we have passed the first stage of digitalising that particular platform.
“One of the good things about our platform now when it becomes operational, all those phones platforms that ask people to register for work, pay in N10,000 or N20,000, will become a thing of the past because this will be a government platform. And when you go there, you know is a genuine platform.
Apart from that, people in diaspora can also upload their expertise and tell Nigerians, what they have that qualifies them for special jobs and if they are employers in Nigeria that need them, again there will be a handshake through that same portal.”
Ngige also assured that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will call off its ongoing strike soon, adding that academic activities will resume in earnest.
He said, the Government’s commitment is to resolve contending issues with the university unions.
The minister, who denied the allegation that the Federal Government was planning to create a different payment table for the unions, said the government had summoned all the relevant agencies, including the National Information Development Agency (NITDA), to brief it on the success so far recording in resolving the contentious issues that led to the ongoing strike by the unions.
He said the meeting of Thursday is expected to look at the progress report by the relevant bodies handling the crisis including NITDA on how far it has gone with the integrity test on the University Transparency and Accountability System (UTAS), which was proposed as an alternative platform by ASUU and the University Peculiar Personnel and Payroll System (U3PS) proposed by SSANU and NASU.
The minister said said he was waiting for the report of the Tripartite Plus Committee comprising the Ministry of Education, the Chief of Staff, Salaries and Wages Income Commission, the National University Commission (NUC) as well as the striking unions.
ASUU, Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU) and the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) are currently on strike. The two Unions on Wednesday, extended their strike by another two months.
