Review Youth Employment Policy, Stakeholders Tell Federal Govt

Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP), a non-profit organisation has called on the federal government to review youth employment policies to tackle unemployment in the country.

The team lead for PEP, Dr Oluwasola Omoju, along with other stakeholders made the call at a National Policy conference held in Abuja yesterday.

The event was organised by Nigerian researchers, supported and funded by PEP.

The conference has its theme, “Addressing the youth unemployment crisis in Nigeria: Challenges and way forward”.

In his submission, Omoju said that there had been copious youth employment policies and programmes in the country in recent years but with no efforts at reviewing their effectiveness.

He said that the high rate of youth unemployment in the country was connected with the slow growth of the Nigerian economy and lack of national planning.

According to him, youth unemployment is a major challenge and issue for policy makers in the country adding that, that is why a review of the policies is necessary.

“There are several youth unemployment policies and programmes introduced by the government to address the problems.

”These include the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Program (Sure-P), Youth Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria (YouWiN) and N-power.

“Enormous human and financial resources have been committed to these policies and programmes.

“However, there has been limited systematic attempts to review the policies and programmes to determine if they are effective or not and under what context are they effective.

“This is why PEP funded some Nigerian researchers with a view to reviewing some of these policies to tackle unemployment in the country.”

The team lead further said that Nigeria’s youth unemployment crisis could be addressed by ensuring that sustainability systems were created into Youth Employment Programmes (YEPs).

He also said that the crisis could be addressed through coordination and monitoring and evaluation of existing YEPs.

Also, Dr Chris Itsede, pioneer director-general, West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM) said that lack of national planning had undermined the development of the Nigerian economy.

He added that the lack of planning had also aggravated the youth unemployment crisis.