Job Creation: Buhari’s Govt Has Outperformed Its Projection – Keyamo

The President Muhammadu Buhari government has outperformed its job creation projection, according to the Minister of State for Labour, Mr Festus Keyamo (SAN).

Mr Keyamo made the comment on Sunday night during his appearance on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.

He said when all indices are taken into consideration, the present government since it came into power in 2015, has done better in the area of job creation than it had projected.

“Absolutely,” he said when asked if the Buhari government has done well in its job creation drive. “If you take all the indices into consideration, I think this present administration has outperformed what the projection should have been.”

The Minister, however, admitted that the constantly growing Nigerian population is an age-long issue which makes it look like the present government has not done enough in creating jobs.

Keyamo explained that “It is not that jobs are not been created, it is just that the populace is growing far more than the jobs that are being created. And this is an age-long problem that we have always had in this country.”

While citing examples of the government’s effort at making jobs available for Nigerians, he said: “the SMEs are there, N-Power is there, the Trader Moni is there, small loans to businesses are there; they give small loans to different businesses at different levels.“

Also, he added that at “the National Directorate of Employment over which I superintend as minister; we have so many programmes under the NDE by which we are skilling up the populace.”

Skilling Up

Furthermore, he restated that the major thrust of the Buhari government is to empower the population so they can be employers of labour and not absorbing Nigerians into the public service as many would think.

“The basic policy thrust of this administration is to skill up the population, the different strata of the populace,” he explained. “Skill them up so they can be self-employed; in such a way that they can also employ others into their small businesses.”