www.signalng.com/youth-employment-1-masquerade-can-create-jobs-1000-men-lai-mohammed/?wt=2
When you hear comments like this, it should stir your
imagination and makes you wonder if unemployment reduction is what we are after
or poverty expansion. Beside the extreme position of culture and the seasonal
nature of masquerade festivity in Nigeria; how can we conclude that 1000 jobs
will be created through masquerade festival?
Even if the job created is millions in number, what
will become of them when masquerade festival is over? Another eleven months of
unemployment with suffering and economic hardship coupled with lack of basic
amenities of lives. When masquerade festival is over does the government have
another thing in mind. The use of masquerade employment can only be sustained
if those festivities are done every month in each states and the same labour
are rotated in order to ensure sustainable employment for them.
The government might consider the option of monthly
festivity in each state and also entertainment week once in each month and
carry the same number of troupe in order to ensure sustainable employment.
It is also to understand that some of the knowledge
gathered in this industry is not transferrable. There are technical and non
technical labours and most times when large opportunities are available the
need for non-technical skills outnumbered technical skills and much more in our
own country where projects are accomplished using labour intensive method, the
skills or knowledge gathered from masquerades festivity might not be readily
adaptable or transferrable to other project.
The promulgation of one-off project to generate large
employment that would render labour redundant after should be reduced because
they are mainly cosmetic approach to the real issue of unemployment but rather
projects that provide sustainable employment opportunities should be developed
and encouraged.
It is high time we look at population and promulgate
law that give a ceiling on the total number of child a couple can have in order
to reduce the growing population and then we can plan on the expected number of
jobs we need to create because we have the data of the graduates we are
preparing for. Our population is a time bomb which will soon explode if we don’t
curb population expansion. The worst scenario is that poverty has become so
real in Nigeria that the only and mostly readily available for the poor man is
the embrace of his spouse (which is also being monetised) the cheapest means of
family planning cannot be afforded such that every pleasurable affair almost
leads to childbirth.