2025 Budget: N46b Inadequate To Address Nigeria’s Employment Challenges – Minister

The Minister of Labour and Employment, Muhammad Maigari Dingyadi, has called for an increase in the ministry’s 2025 budgetary allocation, citing the need to enhance the performance of its core mandates, particularly in employment generation and skills development.

Speaking during the 2025 budget defence meetings with the Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Employment, Labour, and Productivity in Abuja on Monday, the minister stressed that the current allocation of N46,079,960,544 for the ministry and its parastatals was inadequate to meet the nation’s pressing labour and employment challenges.

The minister noted that if the fund is increased, it would be particularly used to renovate, reconstruct, and re-equip the skills development centres under the ministry and its agencies across the country for employment generation.

According to a statement issued by the ministry’s head of press and public relations, Patience Onuobia, the minister argued that skill development programmes would generate sustainable job opportunities for individuals which would ultimately promote national economic growth.

Dangyadi stressed that creating jobs through skill development is crucial to achieving part of the federal government’s Renewed Hope agenda.

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The minister said, “One of the key priorities of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda is job creation, which falls under the Ministry of Labour and Employment. For us to achieve this noble objective, we need special funds to renovate, reconstruct, and re-equip the skills development centres under the ministry and its agencies across the country.

“We are aware that many of the infrastructural projects in this year’s budget can be used to create jobs for our teeming youths. However, over 60% of such jobs are unskilled jobs that are not sustainable. Once the project is completed, many of them will go back to become unemployed.”

“The best solution to unemployment is the creation of skilled jobs with starter packs, where trainees will set up their own self-sustaining jobs to contribute to the economic growth of the nation,” the minister added.

The chairman, Senate Committee on Employment, Labour and Productivity, Senator Diket Plang, stated that the ministry deserved a boost to its budgetary allocation to enable it function effectively.

Also speaking, the chairman, House Committee on Employment, Labour and Productivity, Hon. Adefarati Adegboyega, emphasised the significant role of skill development in the economic growth of the nation.

He noted that sustainable employment programmes, such as skill development, would provide a permanent solution to unemployment, unlike occasional palliatives that only offer temporary relief.