The Chief Executive Officer of Inspiro
Consulting Limited, Mr. Jimi Tewe, speaks about the role of government
in job creation, in this interview with IFE OGUNFUWA
The rate of unemployment is
10.4 per cent and many solutions have been proffered without
significant improvement. What are your thoughts on the state of
unemployment in Nigeria?
It is true that a number of initiatives
have been introduced. It is not the initiatives that matter but their
effectiveness. For example, we hear the government saying it created
3,000 jobs. Government is not meant to create jobs, and when they make
this announcement, you find them employing corps brigades and you see
them taking people off the streets to control the traffic. That is good,
but some organisations could have done that – private institutions. The
role of the government is to provide an enabling environment for
economic development through partnership between government, private
sector and even civil society organisations. What is happening is that
government will let them know its strategic direction. The government
can say, ‘We are farming! We realise that there is global food shortage,
which is real and we can easily plant food and we are going to support
anyone that is going into farming.’ An ordinary Nigerian will key into
the initiative if told that they can get access to a tractor and that
when he or she produces, people will buy.
There has to be a clear government
direction. For example, the government can say, ‘We are going to sign an
agreement with Cambodia to supply some equipment, so if anybody plants
and harvest, the food items will be bought.’
On the other hand, if the government
realises that the country’s strength is manufacturing, it can decide to
go back to manufacturing clothing items. For Africa, we find out that
there is skill deficit in textile industry and the government can do
free trainings for interested people. That is what government needs to
do. I understand from the point of the government that they have three
years left to implement their initiatives. And unfortunately, we don’t
have the culture of celebrating progressive growth. People like
outstanding growth. They want to say, ‘When we were there, we did this.’
Nobody wants to say, ‘I set what is on ground for us to implement in 20
years’ time.’ The reality about solving unemployment is that it takes
time.
What is mainly responsible for wrong career choices by young people?
There are a variety of factors.
Sometimes it is the wrong guidance from presumptions by parents who feel
that certain courses are best suited for their children due to their
personal aspirations or the fact that one of their friends seems to be
doing well in the profession. They feel their children should go into
that career. It could be due to improper career guidance in secondary
schools, where students don’t know whether they are going to be arts or
science students. At that point, there should be a form of assessment.
But the assessment that is usually considered is the intellectual
assessment. Like how well the student is doing in integrated science or a
specific subject. So the one that is doing well across board is placed
in science class and the ones who are not doing too well are placed in
commercial or art class. That is the general notion.
Sometimes, young people come across
people who are excited about what they do. Such a young person will say,
‘When I grow up, I want to be like that person.’ And they get the idea
that they want to be a doctor or a farmer based on something that
inspired them. I will say that the biggest problem is the lack of
proper, structured and stage by stage career guidance that allow people
to make decisions concerning their careers. Once you finish your JSS
exams, you will have to choose. Once you choose, you will start losing
track because when you get to the university and you apply for medicine,
they may decide to give you physiology and gradually you are veering
off further again and at the end of the day, you are way off the coast
and you are wondering where am I. And then life happens to you and you
work. And you take the first jobs that you are offered and 20 years
after, you will be wondering how did I get here?
What factors should be considered to avoid mistakes in career choice?
When people talk about the intellectual
capacity, I am sure there are different theories that speak about
cognitive abilities. We just finished the Olympics and I can bet that
those people will fail physics exams. Are they daft? They are not. But
they have kinaesthetic abilities; that is their strength. They may know
basic mathematics kinaesthesia is their unique ability. Some people’s
abilities are more pronounced and some are hidden.
The basis is understanding that each
individual is different and identifying differences in their areas of
core interest, differences in personality types, differences in their
cognitive and acquired abilities over time. All these things put
together are factors that can be considered. This shouldn’t be a one-off
thing because self discovery is a process and it takes years and as you
keep discovering, you keep modifying your career choices and decisions.
Career choices must be taken in tandem
with external realities. For example, if you are born in a particular
African country, there are certain opportunities that you will not get
maybe due to the level of economic development, compared to another
developed economy. You have to identify the abilities you have and based
on your environment, plug into the opportunities available.
There should be structures right from
primary schools, through information to parents to help them observe the
strengths of their kids, with the understanding that people have
different areas of strength.
Some are more verbal, some can write
very well, some are numerate; those are their strengths. Someone who is
very numerate might do well in the finance role. People who are
perfectionist will do well in control to check what is not right. All
these things will guide decisions on career choice.
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