‘Town, gown misalignment responsible for Nigeria’s high unemployment rate’

Musa M. Rabiu, HR consultant at NNPC and chairman, Management of National Unemployment Challenge (MNUC) Committee of CIPM, in this interview with KELECHI EWUZIE, shares insights into the self-starting initiative embarked upon by CIPM aimed at partnering with government to address the growing unemployment situation in Nigeria. Excerpts:
What informed the setting up of the MNUC Committee?
Management of National Unemployment Challenge is the title of the research study that has given birth to our report. The idea of the MNUC study was conceived by the leadership of The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM) as a response to some perceived social, economic and political challenges of unemployment in Nigeria, being Africa’s most populous country, and as a contribution to national renaissance and well-being.

The MNUC study was initiated to collaborate with the federal government in providing sustainable solutions to the unemployment challenge in the country. This is because the leadership of CIPM had observed different indicators showing that unemployment in the country was growing at an increasing rate, with serious attendant socio-economic consequences. It is part of the Institute’s contribution to sustained national development.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria, in line with its mandate (Act 58 of 1992) as the regulatory body on human resource management practice in Nigeria, owns the initiative to research the unemployment issues in Nigeria and make implementable and sustainable recommendations required for managing the challenge. In sum, MNUC is CIPM’s self-starting initiative aimed at partnering with the government to address unemployment.

What informed the research?
The passion for national development was the first thing that triggered the research. Also, because unemployment impacts human resources, as the regulatory body for the practice of human resource management in the country, CIPM Nigeria is concerned with the numerous implications of unemployment on individuals, organisations and the nation. The MNUC Committee adopted pragmatism as its research philosophy in order to ensure that the study’s direction of theorising, paradigmatic perspective, design and data collection and analysis are respectively deductive and inductive. In addition, the research philosophy ensured balance between quantitative, qualitative, explanatory/descriptive, exploratory statistics and also allowed the flexible use of primary and secondary source data.

From our finding, what are the key causes of unemployment?
From our finding, the immediate and remote causes of unemployment include policy inconsistency, poor political governance, and setting of policy direction which in turn elicits a harsh business environment, lack of stakeholders’ ownership of national employment policy, misalignment of the educational system output and the skill-sets required by current employers of labour, amongst others.

Unemployment rate refers to numbers of unemployed individuals expressed as a percentage of the total labour force. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics have shown that youth unemployment has grown from an average of 16.43 percent in 2014 to 21.50 percent in the first quarter of 2016. As at the end of second quarter of 2016, the national unemployment has risen to 13.3 percent.

CIPM Nigeria has tailored its recommendations/solutions to different causes of unemployment revealed by the MNUC study. These are covered in the recommendations on Government policy on economy; Government policy on  education; Government policy on immigration & expatriate quota; Managing the labour market; Entrepreneurial skills development; Rural industrialisation for cottage enterprise, amongst others.

How can unemployment be stemmed?
If some/all the practical and sustainable solutions recommended in the Institute’s MNUC report are adopted and implemented, we are confident that unemployment challenge in the country would be stemmed in reasonable space of time and admittedly, it will take a great deal of hard work. That is why all relevant stakeholders should collaborate with CIPM in making this happen for the overall good of the nation.
One of the quick-wins is to put in place measures that would stem the current worrisome trend for unemployment, especially the rate of growth. A major study finding is the fact that one of the major causes of unemployment in the country is the misalignment between the output from the Nigerian institutions of higher learning and skills demand by the employers of labour. CIPM is willing and ready to collaborate with relevant stakeholders to review/redesign the curricula of our institutions of higher learning to reflect current skills demand reality. CIPM is also available to train the trainers in those institutions of higher learning to ensure that industry realities are embedded in their learning delivery processes.
The long-term recommendations for reducing unemployment in the country are numerously stated in the report. However, they all require continuous process efficiency to survive. Measures to ensure continuous process efficiency are also stated in our recommendations.

When you talk about stakeholders’ collaboration with CIPM in tackling unemployment, what do you have in mind?
Unemployment is a national issue. Resolving it requires collaboration of different stakeholders in the nation. CIPM has taken a giant and proactive step in that direction by undertaking the MNUC study. There are diverse stakeholders required for successful implementation of the recommendations.
Stakeholders in this case represent those groups without whose support the unemployment challenge would be difficult to overcome. The composition of stakeholders with whom CIPM needs to collaborate is dependent on the angle you want to attack the challenge from, but generally speaking, they include government at different levels, MDAs, relevant regulatory and professional bodies and industry leaders, amongst others.
Though this study was initiated by CIPM, the recommendations in it involve different stakeholders who must collaboratively agree on platforms for accessing the report. This is yet to be done. Once the agreement is reached, it would be communicated as required.

The research on its own may be difficult to annualise but we have built into the recommendations different monitoring and evaluation measures aimed at managing the effectiveness and efficiency of the recommendations. This could be annualised. The recommendations require short-, medium- and long-term actions for successful implementation. The research report would be presented to different stakeholders as and when due. Presently, effort is in place to present the report to the Presidency, Minister of Labour and Employment, Minister of Education and Head of Service of the Federation. Many of our recommendations in the MNUC report are policy-oriented. We are optimistic that the concerned stakeholders would adopt the recommendations for shaping policies relating to unemployment reduction and job creation.

How does the MNUC report align with the government’s agenda on job creation?
MNUC report totally aligns with the government’s job creation initiatives. MNUC study was conceived by the leadership of the CIPM as a response to the social, economic and political challenges in Nigeria, just as government’s job creation initiatives were triggered by the need to prevent/reduce the multifarious consequences of unemployment on the economy.
 
Is CIPM currently exploring collaborations for further promoting the recommendations?
Yes, part of our effort in this regard was a media and stakeholders’ engagement session which recently took place. We need the media and other relevant stakeholders to promote the recommendations in the MNUC report.

KELECHI EWUZIE