By; Bayo Akamo, Ibadan.
A Senior Polytechnic lecturer, Dr. Nathaniel Adebayo has advised the Federal Government to ascertain the number of unemployed youths in the country before going ahead to pay the N5,000 unemployment allowance.
Dr Adebayo gave the advice while delivering the 9th Inaugural lecture of The Polytechnic Ibadan titled: “Rethinking Nigeria’s development paradigm; the entrepreneurship, poverty nexus”.
He declared that to achieve this, there is the need for the Federal Government to first have the database of the youths who are unemployed in the country, saying, “when the government said it was going to pay unemployment allowance of N5, 000 to people, I advised the President that the best way to do it is to first look at the database of those who are unemployed”.
“You cannot want to pay the unemployment allowance to people when you do not have the data of those who are unemployed. How do you get to know how much you are going to spend on them? We have advised, let there be opened website where Nigerians who are unemployed will register and the moment they register, the FG will have a feel of their numbers and therefore be able to plan for them,” he said.
The Senior Principal Lecturer at the Department of business Administration and Management Studies, said there ought not to be any basis whatsoever for the Nigerian youths to be roaming the street or drop out of school”.
“Our youths in this country shouldn’t be roaming the street, they shouldn’t drop out of school and shouldn’t be unemployed. Nigeria has enough resources to be able to employ these youths”.
Speaking further, Dr Adebayo urged President Muhammadu Buhari to appoint an economic adviser who has experimented well with research in proffering solution to the myriads of Nigeria socio-economic problems as the head of an economic team that can address the dwindling economic situation in the country
According to Dr Adebayo, “there is a disconnect between those of us who are researchers and those who make economic policies,” saying, “I want to tell you this, I have said it several times, that the President should appoint an economic adviser, somebody who has done a lot of researches, someone who in his published articles have solutions, to head an economic commission that should be put together by the President”.
“I am not talking about that body that the vice president is the chairman of, that is a constitutionally established commission named National Economic Commission but what I am talking about is the President putting together people in Nigeria, who have at one time or the other experimented with research, people who have consulted for countries that have made it, who are Nigerian that are in Nigeria. We have the opportunity of using them and we have refused to use them. This is a bad commentary on the history of Nigeria”.
On the proposed bill by the Senate on National Poverty Eradication Commission, Dr Adebayo said “right now, the Senate is discussing a bill which has to do with the lecture which I presented today. The Senate is trying to come up with a commission which they referred to as: National Poverty Eradication Commission. I have said in that lecture that Nigeria has too many institutions to track poverty”,
He stressed that the problem “we have in Nigeria today is not the problem of having institution”, adding, “one of these institutions should be taken to coordinate all things relating to poverty and I have actually recommended NAPTEP to be used to coordinate because that is what the law set them up for.”
