The Nigerian government has created 750,000 jobs for youths to close the unemployment gap in the country, official has said.
The Director-General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms, Dasuki Arabi disclosed this at NAN forum, on Sunday in Abuja.
Arabi, who is also the Chairman, Technical Working Committee on Youth Employment, said the intervention followed an interface with the Nigeria Economic Summit Group.
In his words, he said: “We did some research works with the Nigeria Economic Summit Group to look at unemployment in the country and we came out with the policy.
“The summit came up with the idea of the 750,000 jobs that have been adopted by the Federal Government for the youths and the unemployed.”
Arabi said the establishment of the Ministry for Humanitarian Affairs was part of the government’s effort to provide succour for the unemployed and downtrodden before they finally got engaged.
“We are working with the Central Bank of Nigeria and SMEDAN to provide a lot of support for the unemployed.
“It is also the reason why the government is introducing entrepreneurship at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels.
“The idea is for youths to be engaged while in school before the time for employment comes.
“As you are working or schooling you are learning a skill, when you come out you don’t have to rely on the government for employment.”
He said a lot of work was being done to support small and medium enterprises to make it easier for citizens to access the support and assistance given to them.
“The registration of business for certain groups is almost free and is supported by CAC and related agencies.
“These are some of the things that we have done and these are some of the things the government is doing to fight unemployment.
“And the bottom of all this is, the government is doing quite a lot to provide an enabling environment for the private sector to thrive, so they can provide additional space of employment,” Arabi said.
On data generation for proper planning, the DG said the private sector had been empowered, registered and given a license to generate data for a fee.
“We can see that with the privatisation of PHCN, DISCOs have been created, we have vendors selling units for charging meters.
“A lot of things were done for the private sector to thrive, expand and provide support to Federal Government for growth in the economy,” he added.
Arabi said the aim was for the private sector to provide quite many spaces for jobs.
