The Federal Government says it will synergise with the organised private sector in its effort to address the menace of youth unemployment in the country.
Senator Chris Ngige, Minister of Labour and Employment, made the call at the ongoing National Economic Summit on Thursday in Abuja.
The theme of the Summit: “Multi-Sectoral Roundtable on Job Creation and Skills Development in Nigeria”.
According to Ngige, there is urgency for job creation and the need for synergy in the process because stakeholders have been working in silos with duplication of efforts and thin result.
He said: “Let us start the talk and action today by mobilising resources for job creation.
“The Federal Government and Private sector must come together to drive this process of job creation for our teeming unemployed youths and move Nigeria from the path of poverty to prosperity.”
He, however, said there was need for a paradigm shift in the approach to job creation in the country.
The minister noted that the current efforts may not be sufficient to create the jobs needed to gainfully engage over 80-million workforce, majority of who are either unemployed or under-employed.
According to him, with over 80 million workforce, majority of who are unemployed, we have to do something radical, the narrative must change.
He said the school curriculum must change to include new and emerging skills, saying education is power but it is useless when it is not in the right direction.
Ngige said: “We, therefor, must collaborate to solve this problem.”
Earlier, Laoye Jaiyeola, Chief Executive Officer, Nigerian Economic Summit Group, said that individual efforts would not produce the much needed result on job creation as each organisation was doing something in bits and pieces.
Jaiyeola said: “We have resolved at the Nigerian Economic Summit Group that we must put these individual efforts together to achieve results. It is a journey that we all have to walk together.”
Also speaking, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission, expressed the readiness of the commission to partner with organisations and groups to transit Nigeria into a knowledge-based society, thereby facilitating a knowledgeable economy.
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