The President Muhammad Buhari-led Federal Government says
its inability to create 3 million jobs for Nigerians as promised is due to the
downturn of the economy.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Labour and Employment,
Senator Chris Ngige, in an interview with the Sun.
The Minister also blamed corruption as being responsible for
government’s inability to meet its promise.
Ngige noted that with corruption it was impossible to create
jobs.
He said, “If you have corruption, you cannot have resources
to create jobs. Job creation to be specific is a multi-faceted; multi-sectoral
affair involving all strata of the economic chain of the country.
“We had an instantaneous oil price drop when we came in, and
as the prices were dropping, because of militancy, Nigeria couldn’t maintain
oil facilities, there were vandalism of oil exports terminals and oil
pipelines.
“So, Nigeria could not even meet its OPEC output of 2.2
million barrels per day, at one point we were doing only 1.2million barrels per
day last year, it was that bad, around August to October last year, in fact
starting from June we didn’t do more than 1.4 million barrels at an oil price
of 35 dollars per barrel.
“There was no money to create enabling environment for jobs
to be created by the private sector. What is the enabling environment that we
need here, we need power, electricity.”
He also stressed that if not for the government’s
intervention, the sack of workers in the private sector would have been much
more than what it is now.
By Seun Opejobi
