 Moving on now, a new long-term national development plan, the Nigeria Agenda 2050, designed to make the country the top middle-income economy in the world by 2050 and reduce the oil employment rates to 6.3 percent from 33 percent in 2020, has been launched by President Mohammed Dabuhari. How feasible is this in the wake of rising unemployment? Joining me now is the founder of EGO Foundation, Tuluwashi Olanio. Thanks for joining me, Tuluwashi. Good morning to you. Good morning, Jeffstein. Thanks for having me here. It is indeed my pleasure. Let's just dive straight into it. Now, KPMG says the oil employment rate in Nigeria increased to 57.7 percent in 2022 and is expected to rise further to 40.6 percent due to the continuing inflow of job seekers into the labor market. So, Tuluw, explain to me, explain this to me, why more job seekers and fewer jobs? Okay. I mean, so thanks, Justin. So, the increase of the spike is not a surprise at all, right, as so over the years we have had more tertiary institutions who train more people and who turn up more graduates into the labor market, right? Unfortunately, we do not have enough public sector system designed to absorb these high rates of graduate being churned into the labor market, right? So, an average of four to five million, I mean, a very poor million graduate gets pushed to the labor market every year and we don't have this same number. We don't even have half of this number of jobs available in the open market. So, this is not surprising at all, as it has been said and I mean, to be on the positive side, we're also hopeful that this number would not skyrocket largely in the days ahead, right? But every year, we churn out about four million young people, young graduates into the labor market and, hey, the private sector that is supposed to drive and supposed to absorb these numbers are not probably equips, are not probably incentivized, in fact, are not strong enough, yeah, so we won't absorb these people, I mean, hence why we have this number and like the increasing rates. All right, now, a new think tank, they call it agorapolicy. It says that the country needs to create at least 3.6 million net new jobs. You're telling me four million graduates every year. Well, the think tank says that 3.6 million net new jobs annually to reduce the current high unemployment rate to about 5% by 2033, that's in three years at a time. What should our focus as a country really be since we are having this rise in figures and the President is actually promising a whole lot, but so far, what should we be focusing on as it is right now? Okay, awesome, right, it's just been one of the major things that we need to do, and what we need to focus is that it is not the duty of the government to create jobs in any way. And this is one thing that we have gotten along over a lack of time, government designing systems to create jobs. No, it is the function of the private sector to create jobs and to absorb people. What the government is supposed to do is to create an enabling environment for the private sector to flourish so as to be able to absorb a lot more graduate into their system. So the one thing that we need to do is to design policies that support large and medium scale businesses to be able to absorb more, improve employment law that would help, I mean, these people perform at their optimum level, I mean, they want to con us and, lastly, incentivize the private sector as they then absorb those young people. We know that, I mean, so where there are more people working, the economy becomes a lot more productive, right? So it is the job of the government. So what we should do and what the government should do and where we should begin to drive this conversation is to build policies that support the private sector to create more jobs and to be able to absorb a lot more people, right? So some of these policies would include, and some of these infrastructure, we also need to put a lot of infrastructure in place. Some of these infrastructure would include steady power supply and good roads. Amazing security. So in Nigeria, the norm is that we do nine to five. A country who does just nine to five cannot compete favorably with countries who do 24 hours. Now, it's tough for us to be 24 hours in Nigeria because electricity, the sport, infrastructure, the security. So anyway, we're able to then put all of these things in place. We would have companies in the private sector performing at the optimum level. And hey, they would then be able to absorb a lot more people into their system. So instead of nine to five, so when you do nine to five, a few people there wouldn't take it forward. So before now, banks who don't have call centers would hold their services at five o'clock or four o'clock and they've closed and you can access any backing service onto the following day. Well, now the system is a lot bigger. Banks have employed thousands of people to work at their call centers. And these are very great at employment. Same thing for telco. We need to model systems like this across board so as to be able to hire more and to be able to get a lot more people engaged in the system. All right. Just a few days ago, the president, Mohamed Buhari unveiled a strategic plan of Nigeria 2050 to cut unemployment rate to about 6.3 percent in about 20, several years from now that by 2050, judging by the antecedents that we have had over time, because this is not the first time we've had economic plans. We have we had the ERGP by this same administration not too long ago. But with all of this new policies as it is to lose, is there a glimmer of hope for Nigerians really? OK, I mean, there is a great hope. Yes, there is always a great hope and that's that's what has propelled us to this time. However, we would need to unpack the strategy and this policy, right? If not properly implemented, so firstly, if not properly implemented, the strategy would only remain in the books, right? We have seen amazing strategies, amazing document that have been written by the sexist government. But unfortunately, we are still where we are today. And it's such a painful, such a painful pain and such a shameful country that has this volume of human capital. Well, let's even put that aside. Now, let's let's face this. Yes, we need to unpack this policy that has been put together by the government to say how is this workable? Right? We also need to be sure that the private sector guy and the private practitioners and the private sector players have been properly engaged in this document. And we have not just put together another government document that is not workable. And that's what has happened over time. We put together government document that are not workable. At the end of the day, by the time you bring it to to the market, it won't just work. We have seen programs, we have seen initiatives and at the end of the day, they become I mean, they just become they become obsolete before they start. Unfortunately, the document and the program become very obsolete before they start. So we need to unpack this. Oh, yes, I have seen that a lot of private sector engagement will be done in in the next few years as as as written in the policy. But again, we need to look at it and to end and be sure that this will work in a country like Nigeria. And this is broke. And this is workable, right? I mean, well, yes. Hope and I mean, and also with the new administration coming in, I'm sure that it's I mean, you probably will be able to work with this document. I mean, hopefully the new administration would also agree to the policy that I've been designed. I mean, really hopeful about this. All right, good one. Let's just keep our fingers crossed, mine are crossed already. OK, I swing the round off on this session to look over time, your work skills and project in the has focused on emphasis on giving workability skills to final year students and those in the penultimate year. Why is it important that students who are still in school get to know about this workability skills? What's the essence really? The we still have to look there. All right, it's the business insight and plus TV Africa. I hope I get a lot. So are you still with us? Can you hear me now? Yes, I am still here. All right, I was asking the essence of workability skills and you can hear me right? Did you get a question I asked you just now? All right, I think we still have issues connecting with Tolo. I would have loved to get his opinion concerning how students can actually play out in all of this as regards at them getting workability skills because over time we've had to churn out graduates in the country. And when they are out of school, they usually have issues, you know, getting paid employment. Over time, we've had issues like they are not employable. And sometimes they even call them half baked graduates. But then I have to say a big thank you to Luwashi or Lani, the founder of Ago Foundation, as we have looked into this issue of unemployment and I really wanted to talk about how we can actually do more with workability skills. But we just have to move on right now.