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| Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, President and Commander-in-Chief of the armed force of the Federal Republic of Nigeria |
He said at the closing session of a one-day Presidential Summit on Job Creation in Abuja that it was regrettable that several years after the programmes were implemented, Nigeria was still an importer of staple food items, especially rice.
Jonathan assured Nigerians that if elected President on Saturday, his administration would make Nigeria an exporter of rice.
Green Revolution and Operation Feed the Nation were introduced by the administrations of former President Alhaji Shehu Shagari and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo when he was a military head of state.
Jonathan said, “In Nigeria we had Operation Feed the Nation and Green Revolution, but we are still importing rice.
“Part of the reason that the Green Revolution and Operation Feed the Nation did not work was because they did not take off effectively.
“We must look at some critical areas where the government and the private sector can come in. We must move from this point to another point in the next few years.
“If I am elected, I will not be happy to come after four years and talk about rice importation.
“From all indications, we are supposed to produce enough rice, not only for our own use but also for export.”
Jonathan also expressed concerns over youth unemployment in the country.
He added, “We have a major challenge - so many youths that have no jobs. If we don’t harness their energy bad people will use them for destructive purposes.
“We must work with the organised private sector to ensure that we keep faith with the youths and create jobs for them.”
The President stated that skills that could lead to employment generation must be developed through the education sector.
He also promised that his government would crackdown on piracy in the entertainment industry so that “our talented artists can make a decent living and employ others.”
“My mission for Nigerians is to ensure that in the next four years, most of our youths would have something to do so that our politicians can no longer have raw materials to use as thugs,” Jonathan added.
In his address, the Chairman of the National Job Creation Committee, organisers of the summit, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, said the committee was established to tackle the “dangerous paradox in our economy.”
Shedding light on the paradox, he said, “The NJCC was inaugurated by the National Economic Management Team in response to a dangerous paradox that was emerging in our national economy - impressive economic growth but with high and rising rates of unemployment.
“Most worrisome in this emerging paradox is that the highest rate of unemployment was in our rapidly expanding youth population.
“In other words, our youth are under employed, unemployed or unemployable at the peak of their productivity.”
Dangote, who is Africa’s richest man, warned of the dangers of the huge unemployment rate among the youth.
He said, “As we have seen in the Maghreb countries of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and now spreading to the Emirates of the Middle East, youth unemployment is a very effective catalyst for social unrest that has brought down entire governments.
“Unrest in the Maghreb region was apparently sparked by a single unemployed youth who took his own life in a very public manner rather than face a lifetime of being unemployed and not being able to meet the basic human needs of food, shelter and clothing not to talk of the dignity of productive labour.
Dangote listed challenges frustrating job creation in Nigeria to include “poor infrastructure, an unattractive and uncompetitive investment climate, inadequate access to finance, skills shortages and weak regulatory institutions.”
Calling for “strong political will” on job creation , the industrialist said the government should address “policies that directly or indirectly lead to job losses in the name of globalisation.”
He said, “Policies that allow the outflow of our hard earned reserves to pay for the imports of manufactured goods that we have comparative advantage for producing in this country only helps not only to create jobs in the exporting nations but create job losses back home here with the close down of factories attempting to produce the same goods.
The NJCC chairman also condemned reports “in the month of March alone, that the CBN had to source for $4bn to meet the national demand for foreign exchange for imports.”
“You will agree with me that this trend is not sustainable and there is urgent need for deliberate government policies and programmes designed to reverse it,” he said.
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