The Minister of State, Labour & Employment, Festus Keyamo SAN has announced the commencement of a new programme, tailored for the “illiterates and unskilled workers” in Nigeria in a press briefing on Thursday, 28 May.
According to the minister, the Extended Special Public Works Programme approved by President Muhammadu Buhari will select 1,000 persons each from all the 774 LGAs for temporary employment during the dry season. The employment period is 3 months.
“The programme starts on the 1st of October, 2020 and we are already tight on schedule” the minister said.
A close look at programme shows that it is similar to “N-Power”, and will create short term employment for the people whereas the long term employment prospects remains in shadows.
In his response to the unavailability of registration portal the Minister said “…our real targets for these jobs are mostly unskilled rural workers who may not be literate enough & who can’t have access to any portal. The elites think everything is now by internet.”
Some have asked me why there’s no registration portal for the 1000 jobs per LGA. My answer is, our real targets for these jobs are mostly unskilled rural workers who may not be literate enough & who can’t have access to any portal. The elites think everything is now by internet
— Festus Keyamo, SAN, CON, FCIArb (UK) (@fkeyamo) May 29, 2020
“Whilst it is inexpedient to ask largely illiterate, itinerant workers to go on the internet & register for jobs through a portal, we shall surely upload their full names & information AFTER RECRUITMENT on a website for all to see. The monitoring process would be very transparent”
“In the next two weeks we will empanel and empower all the State Selection Committees so they can commence the onerous task of selection of beneficiaries and projects locally”.
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“I inaugurated a Special Inter-ministerial Committee on the Extended Special Public Works on Wednesday, 29th April, 2020”, said Keyamo
“This Committee sat for some weeks and in their collaborative capacity they have proposed a list of projects within their Ministries that may require the intervention of the Public Works Programme. Over 3,000 projects and 42,000 Manpower are being proposed by them. In a Steering capacity, the Committee has also made certain recommendations to me”.
However, if 1,000 persons are selected from each of the 774 LGAs in Nigeria, this means that in total there are 774,000 workers (manpower). Thus, the 42,000 Manpower proposed by the Ministries is just 5.43% of the total. Therefore, the question becomes where will the remaining 94.57% be assigned to?
The Minister said, “Having reviewed all the recommendations of this Inter-ministerial Committee, I believe that the selection of the beneficiaries and projects should be a local affair and not be done from a room in Abuja.”
“Consequently, in line with Section 16(1) of the N.D.E Act, I have decided to constitute special committees in each State of the Federation for the purpose of deliberating, selecting and recommending to my office the names of the 1,000 persons from each of the Local Government Areas in the States to be engaged for this programme.”
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The Committees would also identify the projects to be executed in those L.G.As. These special committees would be known as the State Selection Committees of the Special Public Works (SPW)” he added
“The pilot programme earlier approved by Mr. President was designed to mitigate lack of job opportunities in the rural areas through a short-term engagement of One thousand (1,000) unemployed persons per Local Government Area for a period of three (3) months.
It is a dry season/off season transient job programme and was originally designed for the rehabilitation/maintenance of public and social infrastructure. Participants were to be paid an allowance of N20,000 monthly and were to be recruited largely from the pool of unskilled persons ordinarily resident in those rural areas.”
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This pilot scheme was approved to be implemented in five local government areas in eight states namely: Adamawa, Borno, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Jigawa, Katsina and Kwara.
Beneficiaries are engaged in:
Drainage digging and clearance.
Irrigation canals clearance.
Rural feeder road maintenance.
Maintenance of the Great Green Wall nurseries and orchards in Borno, Jigawa and Katsina States.
Traffic control.
Street cleaning.
Cleaning of public infrastructure like Health Centres, Schools and the likes.
A total of 40,000 direct transient jobs were expected to be created in the eight pilot states.
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The numbers
If total of 774,000 workers from all the 774 LGAs are paid N20,000 each per month, this amounts to N15.48 billion in one month.
Thus, for the three months of this programme, the stipends alone for the workers will amount to N46.44 billion. This will be in addition to other costs of organizing the programme.
But, after 3 months what happens to these set of people? Go back to being unemployed? These are the questions that the government need to focus on.
Instead of creating temporary employment opportunities for Nigerians, it will be more beneficial if the government focus on creating permanent or long term employment opportunities. This can only be achieved through industrialization.
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Government can also provide the basic infrastructures like steady power supply and good road, as well as improving the ease of doing business in the country. These actions will support private sectors to thrive, and attract foreign companies into the country, thus providing long term employment opportunities for the people.
Written by;
Ifunanya Ikueze
