National President of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), Comrade (Dr.) Tommy Etim Okon, in this interview with CHRISTIAN APPOLOS, spoke on why President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration has to be different from the past governments.
Nigeria is in the era of President Bola Tinubu’governance, as a trade unionist, what should his administration prioritise?
Without mincing worlds, President Tinubu must prioritise most importantly job creation, followed by workers’ welfare and he must be a president that implements agreements reached with labour unions. He must come up with policies and programmes that aims at lifting Nigeria up from the abyss the past administration buried it.
He must be different if he want to make a different in Nigeria. Nigeria as at today is in a sorry state across board. So the worst thing Tinubu will do is to allow himself to use the same method the last administrations, especially the immediate past government used. I repeat, he must not make a mockery of himself by governing like a man who knows not his left from right. He should do things appropriately and target-fully. He should tell himself that he has no choice than to turn things around for the better.
Job creation must be on the top 10 list of the things his administration must be remembered for. I am not talking about giving billions to Humanitarian Ministry to waste or to any other agency that has no capacity or required structure to execute job creation related policies. He must particularly put the pegs in the right holes.
Why the emphasis on putting the pegs in the right hole?
The emphasis is because we saw a lot of abnormalities especially in the way the immediate past administration governed. I won’t go into details but President Tinubu’s must be different. Governance might not be easy but when you use the right people, already established agencies and monitor the progress of what you assigned them to do, you will definitely achieve the desired result. And right now, Nigeria and its citizens are in dire need of a breath of free air. Something better.
For instance we all know that when it come to job creation, white collar jobs are no more available as in the past. Therefore blue collar jobs are the new horizon. And to succeed in this direction, we need to seriously equip our graduates with the required new skills. Even, without 21st century labour required skills, they cannot even get the few available white collar jobs. So job creation now is much about ensuring that our youths are given opportunities to learn skills and enable to start up businesses.
And you cannot be talking about skills or other programmes for job creation and you will not make the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) and other agencies inclined, start agencies for such important project.
When the National Directorate of Employment was created, the aim was to equip the youths with skills whether they are in school or not. In fact, the plan was to train Nigerian youths with one skill or the other provided you are interested to lean a skill.
NDE then had what was called School on Wheels particularly targeted to reach the youths who are willing to learn a skill every ever they are. Many of us were beneficiaries of that job creation training scheme.
So with such structured training skills Scheme back in the earlier 1990s, it is obvious that NDE was established with true intent to prepare Nigerian youths to withstand unemployment crisis such as we are having now but unfortunately, subsequent government relegated the agency and the goodies if has for our country and the citizens. So you cannot talk about job creation now and you put such agency behind. Do you now see why i said pegs in the right hole?
Talking about agencies of government required to carry out job creation programmes, the National Directorate of Employment stands out till today. It has the required structure as a blue collar job creation agency and any government that believes in tackling u employment crisis in the country can build on that structure and improved upon. Because things are no longer the same. Skills that were lucrative in 1987 when National Directorate of Employment was created, are no longer kings of the jungle today.
Today, there are a lot of people who have graduated from the tertiary institutions that are going back to learn skills. All most all our graduates have the intellectual know-how but lasts the technical know-how. The good news is that many Nigerian youths who after tertiary education, went to learn one skill or the other are doing so well today. In the fashion industrial, they are the biggest names we hear today. So the question is, why not revive NDE to provide 21st century skills to Nigeria youths as part of targeted effort to compact unemployment crisis in the country.
Decent work is chief in the ILO latest campaigns for the world of work, in Nigeria, how where is the place of decent work as we strive for job creation?
Nigeria is a country that needs to create an environment that is very conducive for the world of work. Because we cannot talk about decent work where the environment is not conducive for the employee. You cannot talk about decent work where the take home of a worker cannot take the worker home. You cannot take about decent work where there is no social safety net that cares for families or social protection for the worker.
So for you to talk about decent work, these are areas that need to be focused. You need to focus on the energy which is the environment and also the economic, because where a worker has the required energy which is the skill and then operate under a conducive environment, the end result will be productivity. When productivity is enhanced, the economy will automatically boom.
When the economy boom, worker now have a purchasing power. The worker will be able to buy goods and services and also save. Once a worker can save, the bank will have money and when the bank have money, it can lend and when the bank can lend, the manufacturing industry will thrive and there will be job creation.
So this is the practical aspect of decent work that we need in Nigeria and should be talking about.
Most people talks about blue collar jobs as a viable option in the quest for job creation, where should the Federal government start from?
Let me go back to the National Directorate of Employment. NDE is one of government agencies that have structure. For the mere fact that NDE and its job creation programmes have been there since 1987, and has structure in all the States and every local government area in Nigeria, is a good place for government to start. The agency is well placed and position when you talk about executing poverty alleviation, job creation programmes.
But let me also talk about the political consideration because very government that come want to take credit for one policy or the other. Perhaps, the democratic governments we have had in recent time felt that given NDE and other job creation agencies the required impetus to provide the needed millions of blue collar jobs for the unemployed Nigerians, the praises may not be credited to them alone. Apparently this is why the needed development in Nigeria is far from fetch. Evidently, our political office holders are petty in thinking that they forgot that government is a continuum.
So it might be that past governments muted or silenced NDE and its job creation programmes, an agency that should be a star in the combat against unemployment but still go about screaming job creation through blue collar jobs.
For instance, government has removed fuel subsidy. They are going to create avenues to cushion the effect. If the intention of government is to make the policy work, it will work. If government intention is to frustrate the policy, you will see that it will amount to nothing in the end.
What I am saying is NDE, is well institutionalised to solve the skill gap when it comes to job creation in this country. If at all, there are aspect of NDE operation that doesn’t match the preset day realities, the best thing is for government to redesign and fund the agency to meet the current job creation need.
To jettison fine policies is not best way to move a country forward. It is just like the calls from different individuals for scrapping of NYSC. NYSC was and still is a very successful policy put in place to foster unity and sociocultural development in Nigeria. Instead of redefining it to suit and be more productive in line with present day realities, people are calling for it to be scraped. All we need is a policy that can change and transform this economy and the citizens to have a sense of belonging and to be proud citizen of this country.
Today in Nigeria, there are so many programmes created under different platforms in the name of combatting unemployment, yet unemployment rate in the country is still skyrocketing. The problem is that government is not doing what should be done. In the name of job creation programmes, government is running here and there, doing this or that in a structure-less manner and in the end there are less or nothing to show for it.
But if the programmes are institutionalise as in the case of NDE, and they are followed logically, there will be concrete data and result to show for it. But because the interventions are scattered, it is very difficult to present accurate data or information on true state of unemployment today no matter the best effort or ingenuity of the Bureau of Statistics.
By now, the tertiary education system should have make sure that our graduates are not just theoretical and paper graduates. But skillfully equipped school leavers, with alternative means of jobs to earn a living. The same goes to the NYSC programmes. Government could establish farms where these people will spend that one year, producing to feed to nation instead going to office to become file carriers that achieves and contribute nothing.
So this government must begin by ensuring that job creation issues are handled by agencies and organizations that have the structure and capacity. This government must move away from handing over employment related issues to families and friend and cronies just because some money will be allocated to execute the programmes.
Government should build on the good structures of the past administrations, from the days of the military to the immediate past. I have mentioned NDE, NYSC, there are others too. But when it come issues of job creation and poverty alleviation, I have not seen any agency of government that has better structure to handle such issues that the National Directorate of Employment.
Beside equipping the NDE to scale up its job creation training schemes, this government must work hard to create conducive environment for businesses to thrive, so that more jobs can be created.
Workers’ welfare, di government has anything to lose if it prioritise workers’ welfare?
Not at all. Government has nothing to lose if it prioritize workers welfare rather it will gain more. Check for instance parent that takes good care of its children, send them to good schools, they end up doing well. And in the same way, parents that did otherwise are automatically raising generation of poverty. So if you create workers who are driven by poverty, it has spill over effect. You are building a poverty stricken society and the economy suffers. So when you place premium on the workers, every other thing surrounding work will flourish.
Any government that does not take the welfare of its workforce as a priority is bound to doom. Because if you like build infrastructure, it is the same worker that will operate it. If you like bring artificial intelligent, it is the same worker that will manipulate it. A punch in the bottle is done by the worker. Workers welfare and productivity goes hand in hand. If government must prioritise productivity, then workers welfare is the best or shortest route to achieve that.
You cannot talk about national competitiveness or international ranking without the workforce. It therefore mean that government must take premium the welfare of workers. It is about running to court to get Injection to stop workers from going on strike, no! You are just postponing the evil days. Do the right thing, the workers will follow.
So this government has to be different in implementing collective bargaining agreements. Because the only problem workers have with government is reneging on collective bargaining agreement. The same thing with other employers of labour, and they will tell you that government does the same thing. We will meet, reach agreement and will you jettison the agreement and yet you don’t want workers to go on strike. You cannot best a child and say the child should not cry.
We have given them a window to do so and gain the confidence of workers and labour movement and Nigerians at large.
