‘Policy Inconsistency, Bane of Nigeria’s Economic Challenges’

Obinna Chima

The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) has said that policy inconsistency over the years in Nigeria is a major factor that has led to the stunted economic being experienced in the country.

The President/Chairman of Governing Council, CIPM, Mr. Anthony Arabome, said this at an interactive session on the Management of National Unemployment Challenge (MNUC) held in Lagos recently.

The findings from the MNUC also showed that other issues ranging from poor political governance and setting of policy direction that elicit a harsh business environment, lack of stakeholders’ ownership of employment policy, misalignment of the educational system output and the skill-sets required by current employers of labour were also causes of unemployment in the country.

To that effect, the CIPM boss said the committee had made viable recommendations aimed at shaping government’s policy decisions concerning the various ramifications of unemployment.
According to Arabome, findings from the MNUC, a study conceived by the leadership of the CIPM as a response to the social, economic and political challenges of managing unemployment in Nigeria. He said the journey of the report was championed by a 7-man committee headed by a Fellow and one-time Registrar/CEO of the Institute, Dr. Musa Rabiu (FCIPM), to collaborate with the federal government in providing implementable and sustainable solutions to the unemployment challenge in the country. This, he said was because indicators had shown that unemployment in the country was growing at an increasing rate, with serious attendant consequences.

“For instance, data from the National Bureau of Statistics have shown that youth unemployment has grown from an average of 16.43 percent in 2014 to 21.50 percent in the first quarter of 2016. “Therefore, as human resource management experts, our objective is to proffer and recommend actionable and sustainable solutions which finely align with the current Administration’s focus on job creation initiatives geared at combating this national menace,” he added.

According to him, the CIPM Nigeria is in a vantage position, and is ready to collaborate with government and other stakeholders to change the unfortunate situation in the country, by providing learning and development interventions in support of the achievement of the goals and objectives of organisations in the public and private sectors of the economy; provision of expertise and training required for the ministries, departments and agencies’ (MDAs) effective pension management; and designing and facilitating a coaching and mentoring scheme for organisations in the formal and informal sectors.

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