Labour ministry to open one job centre in each local government area by March next year

GOVERNMENT ministers have announced plans to unveil at least one job centre in every one of Nigeria's 774 local government areas before the end of March next year as part of a plan to combat the growing menace of unemployment.

 

Unemployment remains one of Nigeria's biggest headaches at the moment, particularly among university graduates and was one of the key issues in last year's presidential elections. In a bid to address the matter, the federal government plans to open one job centre in every local government area that will be used to gather data on the actual number of unemployed persons in the country.

 

Speaking during a panel discussion on addressing Nigeria’s unemployment challenge at the 48th Annual National Conference of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria in Abuja, the permanent secretary in the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, Dr Paul Adalikwu, stated that the centres would address the lack of data for unemployed persons. He added that currently, no one seemed to know the exact number of jobless people across Nigeria.

 

Dr Adalikwu said: “For the first time in Nigeria, that process is being perfected and precisely by the first quarter of next year, we are going to have the processes put in place where unemployed graduates can register their data for proper planning and coordination across the country. So, by the first quarter of next year, we will have our job centres in all local governments in Nigeria.”

 

Explaining how the centres would work, Dr Adalikwu said desk officers would be stationed at the outfits to encourage unemployed graduates to come and register their data in order to boost planning. He added that the government would occasionally get and collate data from all the centres and would adequately decide what to do with respect to job creation.

 

Furthermore, he added that the development would help enhance computation on budgetary provisions for the creation of jobs in states. Dr Adalikwu also stated that the government had increased the number of skill acquisition centres and that this was in order to enhance the capacities of the unskilled and semi-skilled workforce in the country.