The President Muhammad Buhari-led Federal Government says its inability to create 3 million jobs for Nigerians as promised is due to the downturn of the economy.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, in an interview with the Sun.
The Minister also blamed corruption as being responsible for government’s inability to meet its promise.
Ngige noted that with corruption it was impossible to create jobs.
He said, “If you have corruption, you cannot have resources to create jobs. Job creation to be specific is a multi-faceted; multi-sectoral affair involving all strata of the economic chain of the country.
“We had an instantaneous oil price drop when we came in, and as the prices were dropping, because of militancy, Nigeria couldn’t maintain oil facilities, there were vandalism of oil exports terminals and oil pipelines.
“So, Nigeria could not even meet its OPEC output of 2.2 million barrels per day, at one point we were doing only 1.2million barrels per day last year, it was that bad, around August to October last year, in fact starting from June we didn’t do more than 1.4 million barrels at an oil price of 35 dollars per barrel.
“There was no money to create enabling environment for jobs to be created by the private sector. What is the enabling environment that we need here, we need power, electricity.”
He also stressed that if not for the government’s intervention, the sack of workers in the private sector would have been much more than what it is now.
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