Cleric Urges FG to Declare National Emergency on Unemployment

Peter Uzoho

The Prelate of Eternal Sacred Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim Worldwide, Dr. David Bob-Manuel, has called on the federal government to declare national emergency on unemployment.

Bob-Manuel said the level of graduate unemployment in the country was becoming alarming, warning that the trend would worsen the negative security issues being experienced in the country. He made the call yesterday in Lagos at a world press conference that marked his fourth induction anniversary as the Baba Aladura of the church.

As part of the emergency steps, he suggested that the nation’s education curriculum be tweaked in a way that encourages teaching of anchor and entrepreneurial skills relevant to today’s market situation.

In its fourth quarter (Q4) 2020 unemployment report released in March 2021, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had put the rate of unemployment in Nigeria at 33.3 per cent, an increase from the 27.1 per cent recorded in Q2, 2020.

Bob-Manuel said: “Economic and development statistics reveal unemployment as a lagging index in our nation. Millions of our graduates are finding it hard to get a decent job. And where these jobs are available, most employment processes appear not to be fair.

“We implore the government to declare a national emergency on unemployment as this trend, if allowed to continue, will increase the negative security issues that we are currently experiencing as a nation.

“Our education curriculum also needs to be tweaked to encourage the teaching of anchor and entrepreneurial skills relevant to today’s market situation.”

He advocated that government at all levels should rethink their spending on things that have little impact on the life of Nigerians, advising that all the money being spent on security votes should be used to create opportunities for the people.

Bob-Manuel, who regretted that Nigeria has abandoned agriculture that used to be the mainstay of the nation’s economy before the advent of crude oil, however urged the government to launch an aggressive comeback to agriculture in order to help fight poverty, hunger, unemployment and dwindling government revenue.

He added: “So, government should look into those areas because we have abandoned those things. Before now, the main source of income for the Eastern Region was palm produce.

“The west had cocoa, the north had groundnut. Government has to consider whether we have to abandon this agriculture that was giving us our revenue before crude oil came? So, for us, we want the government to look back and put more emphasis on agriculture and food production.”

“With the rate at which our population is increasing, if government doesn’t do something about agriculture and food production, we may have problems. So that emergency includes among other things, how we can revisit our policy on agriculture.”