With distressing statistics from local and international agencies on unemployment, poverty and general human development indices, it was past time for Nigerian authorities to take drastic steps to remedy the daily deteriorating situation. Already, a United Nations study in 2015 projected that Nigeria’s population will move from the current 200 million+ to 264 million by 2030 making it the fifth most populated country.
Going by current trend, this would be disastrous for, as at end of September 2018, National Bureau of Statistics said the number of economically active or working age population (15 – 64 years of age) increased to 115.5 million. Of the number, only 69.54 million engaged in any form of employment. The agency explained that 51.3 million of this number had full time employment while 18.2 were just managing to do anything at all while 21 million able bodied adults were absolutely jobless. “The number of people within the labour force who did not have a job and did nothing at all (unemployed) and those that were in some part time work (underemployed) rose respectively from 15.9 million and 18.0 million in Q3 2017, to 20.9 million and 18.2 million in Q3, 2018. Total combined unemployment and underemployment rates increased from 40.0 per cent in Q3 2017 to 43.3 per cent in Q3, 2018.”
Nigeria, a country with lots of promises at independence progressively declined realistically between 1960 and 2019. From a net exporter of groundnuts, hides and skin, cotton and textile, grains, cocoa, kola nuts, cashew, oil palm and others in the 1960s, the country slid to spending $22 billion on food importation in 2018 according to former Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbe. As a result, farmers left the farms, while textile and garment factories in Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, Ado-Ekiti and the East shut down.
With fiscal authorities appearing to be oblivious of the looming danger, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) decided to step in and create the paradigm shift needed to reverse the negative trend of unemployment, poverty and underdevelopment in the country through its development finance initiatives. The apex bank launched several initiatives including Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP), with rice becoming the most successful produce, restricted official foreign exchange to importation of items on 43 items. Other products promoted by CBN under the ABP include poultry, fish and maize.
However, with the billions sunk by both Central Bank and Federal Government into revamping the economy through promotion of entrepreneurship and agriculture, beneficiaries continued to complain about lack of patronage and they continued to incur losses under deliberate sabotage of smuggling by some powerful Nigerians, multinational corporations and authorities of some neighbouring countries.
