BY V. AL-PEA
Like a cankerworm, the skyrocketing rate of unemployment in Nigeria has eaten deeply into the fabric of our society. Year in, year out, successive governments often make promises about creating job opportunities for the teeming youth. Yet, the labor market keeps bloating by the tick of the clock. The youth, who are suppose to be gainfully engaged for the progress and betterment of their society seem to have been neglected and abandoned to their fate. This ugly trend has plunged them deeply into social vices and pushed them to resort to other means of livelihood—hence, the rapid and steep increase in crime.
The prevailing idleness of the youth has further pushed our reports through the streets of Jos, shebeens, and some locally brewed beer spots where most of them are found idly wasting their youthful lives away. They seem to comfortably make such places their second home. It is usually in these places that their youthful productive minds, intoxicated with various drugs and stimulants conceive dangerous ideas that motivate them to commit crimes.
Evangelist Bulus stated, “An idle mind is indeed the devil’s workshop that is why you find out that crime rate is usually higher among youths because they have no jobs”
His comments were supplemented by business man Jacob Moses. “… it is because they are jobless that they become veritably useful to perpetrators of violence.”
Regrettably, some of the youths are trained artisans in various fields yet they lack the much needed capital to start off on their own. Not to speak of others who are graduates roaming the streets in endless search for jobs that may not even be found.
What has happened to all the beautiful campaign promises of successive governments about job creation? Barrister Timothy Parlong, the Special Adviser to the Plateau State governor on Peace Building during an interactive session with youths on the need for peaceful co-existence, regrettably admitted the increase in unemployment rate, which “is staring us in the face”. Parlong further admonished them to engage themselves in gainful ventures no matter how little, even as they anticipate bigger employments. However he admitted, “government is not doing enough in terms of employment”.