Oreoluwa Boboye, Chief Executive Officer of Jobberman Nigeria, a leading recruitment solutions company in the country, was in Enugu recently where the firm staged a career clinic for job seekers and those that needed clarity in their career paths. He spoke to MAGNUS EZE on the essence of the event, the alarming unemployment situation in Nigeria and what could be done.
Why Jobberman is in Enugu
To start with, Jobberman is not a state-owned company. It is a private company and our mission is beyond our current location. We are based in Lagos. However, our mission is to the Nigerian people and Africa as a whole. This is important to us because the problem we are trying to solve is also quite general. Unemployment problem is all across Nigeria. There is unemployment in Lagos, in Enugu State as well as in the North. So, for us, it is not just where we have our company or where we will be successful but for us it is where do we feel we can record the best impact in the country. In partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, through events like the Career Clinic, we arm young talents with the skills and competencies they require to succeed in their careers. So, we have brought some solution to unemployment issue to Enugu.
We know that you are bothered about the unemployment situation in the country. What particular factors could you attribute the situation to?
Unemployment has been with us since there was employment. Which is the gap between the people that have jobs and those that do not have jobs. There are many things we can point to. One is the place of government and the attitude of government to ensure that we have the right support system and the right structure to even drive the level of productivity because there is a huge link between productivity in an area and employment. If the productivity is low then there will be low employment. And the enabler of productivity anywhere in the world is power, transportation and logistics. So, there is a part where the government is supposed to play. I know that different governments have tried in many ways-some of them focused on power, some on agriculture, some on roads and what not. While we acknowledge the work that has been done, there is still a lot to be done. It then comes to the individuals. You see a lot of companies coming to solve their own problems. You see telecos with their base stations, with diesel generators instead of being connected to the national grid. Just everybody trying to be productive as much as they can. The causes are enormous. Our university system, the fact that we have placed a lot of importance on degrees, what happens to students coming out of technical colleges that are actually supposed to drive the technology? We need to come to play together to solve this unemployment problem. However, we also need to acknowledge the fact that work is being done. Government is trying. Lots of government stakeholders are trying. Even those in the Ministry of Education are trying. In our own capacity, as a linkage platform between job seekers, we are also contributing our own quota to bridge this gap.
=Every time, we hear that so-so number of people has got employment and all that and the focus is more on certificates instead of the blue-collar ones, to the point that we don’t find artisans again. Several artisans in Nigeria today are from neighbouring countries. Is there any way you can drive this home?
I think the first thing that is important to us is to find where we have the most opportunities. One thing that is an indicator for me as the government sees it as a problem is the last research produced by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) stating that the nation’s unemployment rate is now in the single digits, which is weird. But that would cause a lot of questions but part of the things that it raised is that we have for a long time neglected our informal sector. There is a particular sector called the informal sector. We call it informal because they do not operate the normal 9.00am to 5.00pm formal sector. They don’t have offices but they are actually the bedrock of our economy and our society. They are the ones that give our economy the day-to-day activities. They are the plumbers, the bricklayers, the Keke drivers, the cab drivers, just to name a few. There is a need for us as a society to begin to focus on that and also demystify this thing. If you are asked what’s your job, if you don’t say banker, you are not respected. If you don’t say engineer, you are not respected. So, there is need for society to give regard to those who work in this sector. We have also taken time to do our research on this informal sector. We look at what individuals and the government can do to ensure that we get the full benefit of it. The informal sector is important. It is high time we stopped pushing that to the background. In talking about job creation, we should also look at that side. How many tilers have we empowered? How many bricklayers have we empowered? How many painters have we empowered? There are builders, right? But when you see the handwork of a Nigerian bricklayer and someone from Togo, you are like what school did you go to? And we need to pay attention to that because our technical schools should start producing technical people. We’ve lost that as a nation. We didn’t just get there. There was a time when our people with technical degrees were highly respected but then it shifted. Everyone wanted a degree. Now we all have degrees but we don’t have jobs. But then there are opportunities in these spaces. You see people importing tilers from neighbouring countries. Even importing hair braiders. They will tell you that when a braider from Benin plaits your hair, it is neater than when a Nigerian does it. And we can fix this by training people properly and helping them to take advantage of the economic benefits.
When Chris Ngige was Minister of Labour and Employment, he talked about certifying these trades so that the artisans could have something to show. How is Jobberman helping in this direction?
The most important thing is showcasing. By this, I mean the way we celebrate our doctors once they are inducted; the way we celebrate when people graduate from the Nigerian Bar, that whole week, that’s what everyone’s talking about. Everyone is happy to have a lawyer in his or her home. That same way we also need to showcase that for all these trades or artisans. We need to show that these people have taken up this challenge to actually learn how to be good bricklayers and see their work, their potential and that is very important. Because what attracts a young person to that kind of work is the earning power. So, imagine that your plumber is paid well, why will I not be satisfied being a plumber when I know that if I fix your work; I will be able to eat and you will not price me down? Regarding what we’re doing, we cannot solve the entire problem. We are a private organization but this is why we are doing this, to bring the entire stakeholders. We didn’t do this on our own, we worked with the government and the private sector for them to be a part of this where we actually showcase the possibilities within the employment sector. We have the honour of hosting the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Labour and Productivity, Enugu State. He was here and was excited with what he had seen. Our job is to start the conversation. We recognize our part in this in that we are not the ones to solve the entire problem but we can start the conversation and the more we have this conversation, the more we tell people, see there are opportunities here, the better for every one of us.
How do you think Nigerians can begin to imbibe the culture of volunteering so that people will have opportunities? How do we begin to give opportunities to young people? Is it by legislation? Because anyone looking for a job is asked for years of experience, yet the person hasn’t worked anywhere before.
To a large extent, legislation has done its part. That is why we have this SIWES and Industrial Training, then NYSC. But I think there is a part the general populace needs to play. We need to separate immediate gratification and learning. Volunteering is a means of learning. Assume that you don’t know anything. Even if you know something and you go there with an open mind knowing that you are going to learn from someone, without the immediate thinking of, what do I earn from this? That is the problem of the average Nigerian youth. And it is not their fault. They need to earn. We need to re-orientate ourselves. How do we separate this initial gratification and the need to learn? And then of course there is legislation but I think we already have it. Nigeria is a country blessed with policies. You will read some policy documents from the government and you are like, why are we not doing it? Amazing policy documents but there is need for us to re-orientate ourselves as a society. And for the private sector and everywhere, rather than say five years of experience, you should say that the applicant must have volunteered in two or three places. That can help.
