Jonathan inaugurates jobs board to address unemployment

Abuja – President Goodluck Jonathan, on Wednesday in Abuja,
inaugurated a Presidential Jobs Board of Nigeria to create jobs for
unemployed Nigerians.
The 31-member board comprising government officials and the private
sector would be headed by Vice President Namadi Sambo.
The board, described by Jonathan as a special purpose vehicle, was
charged with the responsibility of facilitating employment generation
across the country.
He said “no one can deny that jobs are at the centre of economic
revolution. In fact, the problem facing any head of government all over
the world is Job creation.
“Jobs are essential to make our people live well and they are critical to
the promotion of our people’s dignity.
“Jobs enhance self worth and it is a source of personal pride. Indeed, it
is at the heart of national economic and social development.’’
According to the president, the board is carefully constituted to include
key members of the public and the private sector to ensure that it can
draw on the cross expertise of people in government as well as those in
private enterprise.
The president urged Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of
government involved in job training to go further by creating employment
opportunities for their trainees.
Jonathan listed some of such MDAs as the Small and Medium
Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), Industrial
Training Fund (ITF) and the National Directorate of Employment (NDE),
among others.
“I have observed over a period that agencies of government are more
interested in training.
“My conviction is that if you train 100 people and none of them is either
self employed or employed by any corporation, that is a total waste.
“You are rather frustrating more people and probably increasing the
number of criminals in the society.
“I always say that if you train a young man as a fitter and he has no job
to do, he or she will use that skill to break into banks, because you have
trained him on how to handle iron and how to handle complicated
locks.’’
According to him, it is better to train 20 and to use the money for the 80
to create employment for the people
instead of training 100 people and none of them gets job.
The President said “it is not just how many people you train, but how
many people you have given employment through that training
programme.’’
Jonathan, who expressed confidence in the ability of the board members
to deliver on their assignment, urged them to take the assignment
seriously.
Responding, Sambo thanked the President for the initiative, which he
said would address the challenge of unemployment in the country.
The vice president said that the committee’s target was to create three
million new jobs for Nigerians in the next 12 months, and pledged the
commitment of the board members to the assignment.
In her remarks, the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs Dieziani
Alison-Madueke, said that the President had brought together private
sector financiers and a mix of key public sector players on the board.
Alison-Madueke said that in the last three years, the petroleum ministry
focused on providing Nigerians with the tools they needed to secure jobs
in the oil and gas sector, which she said was mystified before now.
She said “we have brought in Nigeria content so strongly that at no time
in Nigeria’s history have you seen this number of Nigerians across the
spectrum of expertise coming into the oil and gas sector.
“They did not need to be petroleum engineers or even geologists. They
only needed to have the abilities to learn and come at different levels
into the entire spectrum of the downstream service sector of the oil and
gas.
“As you all know, it has been a great success and it is now being
repeated across other sectors of the economy.
“As we concentrate on increasing gas supply in tandem with the Ministry
of Power, the Central Bank of Nigeria and the National Electricity
Regulatory Commission, we will change the face of the economy in its
entirety.’’
According to her, government is simultaneously looking to ensure that
Nigeria has gas for industrialisation.
Also speaking, the Vice Chairman of the board, Mr Tony Elumelu, said
that the board was encouraged by the various policies put in place by the
Federal Government in its transformation agenda.
Elumelu said that with the policies in place in housing, power, ICT,
housing mortgage, oil and gas sectors, creating three million jobs would
not be difficult.
“Kenya created over 700,000 jobs within one year, what has encouraged
us to be part of it is the transformation initiatives of the Federal
Government.
“We are happy that we have the Minister of Petroleum Resources here
among us who has played a strong role in the transformation from the
point of view of indigenisation, bringing in Nigerian players in the oil and
gas sector.’’
Elumelu assured that the board would train Nigerians to ensure they
were employable.
Other members of the board include the Secretary to the Government of
the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim, the ministers of agriculture, labour
and productivity, among others. (NAN)