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Solve insecurity by creating more jobs – Labour minister

The Minister of labour and productivity, Emeka Nwogu on Tuesday said that unemployment is the cause of restiveness and insecurity in the country. The minister … Continue reading Solve insecurity by creating more jobs – Labour minister


The Minister of labour and productivity, Emeka Nwogu on Tuesday said that unemployment is the cause of restiveness and insecurity in the country.

The minister said this at a forum organised by the National Defence College for mapping out policy options to curb insecurity in the country.

He said that despite the high level of profits declared by multinational companies operating in Nigeria, “the proportion of Nigerians living in poverty is increasing every year.”

Mr Nwogu said that these revelations “reflect the growing frustration and angers of millions of Nigerians youths, whose hopes and aspirations could wrongly be expressed through violence and crime.”

The Minister advocated massive jobs creation as a recipe for internal security, peace and stability of the nation.

Speaking at the event, the commandant of the Defence College, Rear Admiral Thompson Lokoson, said though it was too early to assess recent government initiative for employment generation, previous efforts in that direction have failed to produce the desired results.

He said it is alarming that an estimated 100 million Nigerians live in poverty while 40 million are unemployed.

He said that the current waves of insecurity sweeping across the country could be “partially attributed to lack of job security.”

The commandant said that like most governments, actual job creation must become the preoccupation of the present administration especially considering that previous efforts are yet to yield any tangible results.

Other security experts and participants at the gathering suggest that the first step must be to identify and address youth restiveness arising from joblessness and broaden the base of policy initiation and implementation by involving private, public and security outfits towards a successful resolution.

The United States’ also on Monday urged the government to focus on developing the northern part of the country as a way of combating the Boko Haram insurgency in that part of the country. The US government further promised to support Nigeria in crushing the restiveness in the North.

Reports from news agencies showed that critics have accused the Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan of relying too heavily on security measures in the fight against Boko Haram and that his government is not addressing the underlying economic problems that provided the conditions for militancy in the north.

Recently, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, a northerner and native of Kano, raised controversy when he said that the north was underdeveloped because the federal government was not allocating a fair share of the country’s petrodollar earnings to the region.

Supporters of President Jonathan, a southerner, have countered Mr Lamido’s assertion that the federal government is neglecting the north, saying that Jonathan inherited a heavy legacy of long years of neglect of social and economic development of the north by northern leaders themselves who have held power in Nigeria longer than leaders from any other part of the country.