 Nigeria is currently going through one of its worst unemployment crises in recent times. This is according to a new report by the World Bank. It also noted that the socioeconomic challenges facing Nigeria over the last 10 years have led to an astronomical increase in the number of citizens seeking asylum and refugee status in other countries. In the report titled of Roads Less Travelled, assessing the potential for migration to provide overseas jobs for Nigeria's use, the World Bank further estimated that there were 2.1 million internally displaced persons in Nigeria in 2020 alone. Now joining us to discuss this is Gospel of Bailey and Hees and Economist. Thank you very much Gospel for joining us. Thank you Mary-Anne for having me. Yes, I know that you're not a politician but you have the statistics for all of these things. One of the key things that this government of Bohari campaigned on is to cut short the level of unemployment in Nigeria and help young people to get access to jobs other than the fact that they were also going to build the economy and fight corruption and fight insecurity. Here we are in 2021 while we are facing a Twitter ban and of course other issues of insecurity, food shortage. We also are dealing with unemployment at its peak. What does this really say about our government and how we're dealing with issues of the teeming population which is mostly if not 60% youths? Well I don't think that the government of the day or to a very large extent the political economy and that speaking across administration and so don't make it look as though it's a question of the government of the day. Across the political economy there's been a very huge poor leadership when it comes to dealing with the Nigerian unemployment problem and that's because I've also engaged at different levels within government social intervention programs on how it's dealing with employment. I'll say confidently that all of the policies, majority of the policies that we've brought out has been designed to patch the problem. Rather than deal with the problem from a root causal point of view. To rule out an initiative thinking that that initiative will be able to get millions or provide millions of jobs and all that. I realize at the end of the day it looks as though the statistics are worsening. Technically speaking unemployment is around almost 33 to 35% right now and the unemployment is around 28 to 29%. If you combine both together it's almost 60% in a sense. And that's to say that we all did a very good job in terms of ensuring that our youths are gaining access to mainstream productive jobs not just jobs. So it's a very big question for the political economy and in my opinion I think it's lack of public leadership in dealing with this big question. Yes because I was talking to some people within the week and I said we were very quick to put all our problems or you know drop the buck at the feet of the presidency. Yes the presidency does have its job cut out for it. But then we fail to look at the people who directly work or serve us. I'm talking about governors, I'm talking about local government chairman and I'm talking about you know the people who take who are closest to us in governance. When we look at the budgets of states and I'm talking about all the 36 states including the FCT in terms of education, does it scratch even the surface of the SDG goals for education in Nigeria or in the world generally? How much are we putting into education? And when we talk about infrastructure development and industries or opening up spaces that would employ young people how much is devoted to that? Because on the other hand people are also advocating for open budgets and we hardly have access to these budgets. We only hear the names that they're christened with and the bogus amounts that these budgets are made of. But when it comes down to the nitty-gritty are the people really carried along and do these budgets reflect on people-oriented programs that can really put food on tables? Alright Mayor, this question has been a very big question across board and I would speak to the reasons why I mentioned public leadership at the initial, I'm answering the initial question. Now public leadership cuts across from the federal level to the state and to the local government level. Now that said, the argument for increased budget sides has been in the mainstream for a very long time. And technically it's a fair argument because we're not even developing, devoted, required, I think United Nations threshold. You know, talking about in 6% of your budget should be devoted to education. Alright, we're not even close to that and I think we are around 8% there about hovering around that space and all that. But because I've realized that I don't have intense work on the demand and supply side of unemployment and skills gap analysis and all of that for tier one organization. I've come to realize that even if the injured budget were to be getting 30% on education and employment and all of that you still realize that it may not significantly cut down because the problem is not so much around funding then it's about trying to understand the complexity around this unemployment issue in the sense. Now there are different pockets and different perspectives of the problem. That's why I talked about the policy angle first of all. Until we understand the different contributory elements to these many. No matter how much you have on the table, it will still be funds that will go down the drain because you may not be able to deploy funds as a policy instrument if your policy design in the first place is wrong. So no matter how much you want to devote to budget, which is a good argument if the design work is not properly done, so to take for instance the end power it's a party policy. It doesn't deal with the unemployment challenge at the root cause level. When you talk about dealing with unemployment challenges, education perspective there is that individual perspective. There is a poverty trap within the system. Poverty trap simply means that psychological perspectives that the culture and behavioral pattern of a people have done to the esteem of its young people in the sense. They are also the angle of uselessness. There is a perspective around education institutions and many other angles. There are parents who do not want to understand what it requires in terms of human capital development and their roles. So there are different pockets to dealing with this unemployment and what we see now as unemployment are problems that have been built over the years from a good costal angle. So increasing the budget now may not make any significance. It's just one out of a very wide pool of cluster of solutions we need to look at to deal with this tension from a design angle. So the way you sound and I might be wrong, please correct me is that maybe these leaders of ours do not understand what the problem is in its entirety and just throwing money at it might not solve it. But if they do know what the problem is, I want to believe that they do because they campaign on these things. Like I said, I made an example of the president, Bohari, when he was coming into office. He was there for governments, previous governments. I mean they come and go. But this particular government was very clear in its three-point agenda as to what it wanted to change in Nigeria. So obviously these people do have an idea of what we need in this country but my question is why does it seem so much of a mirage? It seems like it's rocket science for them to even... Because you have to start somewhere. We're not saying that we want a full-blown thing to happen in one day. But why does it seem so difficult for them to at least start something or address the problems from the root cause? Because we can't keep saying the same thing. I mean every single time we talk about this, whether it's next year, the year after, we still come back to the root cause of the problem and nobody seems to be addressing it but then we just pour water on it and then hope that it trickles down to the bottom. So really, do you have an idea why there's so many bottlenecks or the fact that it's not even being addressed? All right, to be very honest, a lot of people think and this is not just the Nigerian government alone right now. When you talk about unemployment, unemployment is a general problem. Anybody can come and say unemployment, develop policy manifestos around that and it used to sound intelligent around how it should be solved. There are literally one or two, three, four, five solutions you can think and talk with your mind. That's one. Now secondly, the big question is, are those the right solutions or right being the fact that have we probably understood where the problem is? And I can't be dead to you seriously that a lot of the people who think they understand what the human capital needs or unemployment challenges is only have an understanding the problem is, not really what the problem is. How much of intense, intense vigorous research has gone into understanding the Nigerian unemployment problem, that's number one and then understand the skills gap in the sense. So even private sector leaders, and we talk about human resource managers who sit in big corporations, even people who administer test, attitude test and all of these things or I think they know what the problem is or when it comes to them. So it's not a government problem alone. The Nigerian ecosystem and its players around human capital development within corporates and even in other spaces think they understand what the problem slash on the unemployment problem is. There are deep perspectives to this problem and because we are not a nation given to research and critical policy engaged research in the sense, we are not being able to handle issues at a root causal level. So anybody can talk about unemployment and roll out manifestos and guess what, the numbers are worst enough. Even roll out social intervention programs. Some people go as fast paying Nigerian youth some certain number of salary on their government. It doesn't solve unemployment because people writing the manifestos and those who are executing it do not have an understanding around what the base would cause how critical issues are and the dynamics to this problem. Parents don't even know. So it's an interesting perspective because going forward in the sense, in my own opinion, the conversation and perspective should be how do we understand this thing at a root causal level? Do the rigorous work we need to do and begin to define priority areas within the root causal space and identify how institutions need to work together to begin to deploy solutions around this thing. So it's going to be crossed out in all sense of plans to get to work in quotes to get unemployment out of the window. There again, there's a big one that's called on-down employment meaning that people are earning and working below their capacity. That's a huge problem, a huge monster in the room that nobody's talking about at the moment and that's about 26% right now. So these are the big questions we need to answer ourselves. The conversation around human captive development bothers heavily on understanding context and the different dynamics at the root causal level that impacts those numbers year on year on year. How many businesses, how many human resource managers can tell exactly from an empirical standpoint how COVID-19 has affected their talent management and talent workforce? This is one of the things that was cited in this World Bank report because you talked about the impact of COVID-19 also on businesses, on the people. It's also talked about migration and we've seen in the space of six months how many people have engaged in proper migration by the way. I'm talking about people who have taken their families away from this country through the right channels. And then we have also seen a rise in irregular migration as a result of people looking for greener pastures as they have been frustrated in the country that they would call their home. So as much as we keep reeling in these figures we're getting close to an election year as much as you say that it's a dirty work people need to engage more, people need to be educated to get a deeper understanding. The voters themselves need to also have some fair knowledge as to what they should be requesting from the politicians because the time is nigh, they're going to come for our vote. And if this is where we are right now, what should we be asking for? There's a big confusion on the table. Should I be very honest with you? Number one, the political economy and all those who will be running for elections in 2020 will know what the root cause and the real problem is. And in the first century economic development if you cannot define what the social problem is, I'm not even talking about the definition of the problem. But Gospel, that's why we have that's why they're technocrats, that's why they're teams. The governments always come you know, I don't know about this government but the governments have technocrats and they have experts and they have institutes of that framework. There has to be some intelligible people on that table. Yeah, Maryam, that's what I'm saying that the cluster of people within those teams and even as I mentioned, human resource managers within organizations cannot really define the problem. So it's not a function of government anymore. Even the people who are saying that they should hold government accountable are not even interested to understand enough because it's not what you call an organization and citizen agenda setting. It means that how commercially aware are the citizens in that country enough to hold government accountable. And I'm not talking about just holding placards, going for protests or tweeting and talking about this thing. I'm talking about how much of empirical detailed, organized work is being done to push advocacy forward. That's what I'm saying. I'm not talking about all these institutions around the world. I'm talking about intense R&D focus every year I engage at least almost 3,000 youths when it comes to unemployment and understanding skills gap. And I've had a detailed report around these things. It will shock you to know that a lot of professors, a lot of people who sit on these conferences, a lot of people who sit on panels, a lot of people who work in government things and who would work as technical assistants to the next set of public leaders that will show up in the country do not have an idea. And the citizens also how would citizens who do not have an idea or the government who also don't have an idea. So the truth is that we are in this for a long haul. We are not a personally disciplined people who are looking for the right solutions to the problems. And I'm afraid, I don't mean to sound negative on this show tonight, but I'm afraid it's going to last for a long time. Until there is a key until there is a major change in the mindset of people, both at the fellowship level and at the leadership level, we may not be able to tell ourselves the honest things when it comes to ways through which we need to redesign our policies and drive for change. I'm not talking about motivation and all of that. It's critical research based, finding reasons and building a mechanism around how we meet people from under-employed or unemployed to self-reliance and objective human capital based on the country. And that's a very big question right here. Well, thank you very much. Gospel really is an economist but then it looks like we're going to have tough times ahead unfortunately but thank you for opening our eyes to this. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for having me as always. All right. Well, we'll take a short break and when we come back I will give you my take. I'm at a loss for words because on one hand we're dragging and pulling with the government that is unable to understand the yearnings of the people and come to their aid and on the other hand we also have a people who really do not understand how to engage its government does not understand what to bring to the table and does not even understand that they have the power to get their government to be accountable. So we're in between a rock and a hard place. So let's stop wasting our time to watch and I'm not saying don't watch Nollywood or don't watch action movies from Hollywood but maybe we should start reading, maybe we should start digging, maybe we should start concerning ourselves with things that have to do with our future like governance, the nitty-gritties, the questions that need to be asked, the people that we need to start pushing to be in the forefront of our leadership. We cannot have empty heads leading us not understanding what we the people need but then they want to foist on us what they think we need we need to begin to align our differences, we need to also come together, let's find that thing that brings us together as a people we all have a unity of purpose and that unity of purpose is to push this country ahead, to develop this country it leaps and bounds, we cannot continue to run around in circles, we're too much of a giant to be this bad, this destroyed I mean Nigeria seems to have lost all of its glory and why because even the people that call themselves Nigerians have given up hope you can't throw in the towel it's time to start digging ask questions, do researches you don't have to be a professor or a scientist to do research, read something other than that novel that you like find out how we can change this Nigeria because we're going to do it together you cannot leave it to that politician because who knows, you maybe know even better or more than that politician but we as followers followers I beg your pardon need to strengthen our knowledge of governance so that we can engage the people that we call our leaders, I am Mary Anna Cohn thank you for watching, have a good evening