How Buhari Government Failed To Provide 15million Jobs Promised Since 2015

The President Muhammadu Buhari’s government on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) promised in 2015 to deliver three million new jobs yearly, and ought to have given the teeming population of unemployed Nigerians 15 million jobs by the end of last year.

Checks by SaharaReporters into the 2015 APC Manifesto confirmed that the party assured that the Buhari government would create three million new jobs a year through “public works programmes and shifting the economy towards value-added production.”

The APC had packaged Buhari as a repentant dictator and democrat, whose coming to power would create millions of new jobs yearly.

In stark contrast however, the National Bureau of Statistics in one of its latest reports by December 2020 said Nigeria’s unemployment rate was 33.3 per cent of the 122 million Nigerians within the working age bracket of 15-64 years.

This means that about 30 million Nigerians were not unemployed as of December 2020.

The NBS also stated that the unemployment rate in Nigeria increased from 27.1 percent in the second quarter of 2020 to 33.3 percent in the fourth quarter.

A Bloomberg report also added in March 2021 that Nigeria surpassed South Africa on a list of 82 countries whose unemployment rates were tracked, with Namibia leading the list with 33.4%.

The report said Nigeria’s unemployment rate surged to the second highest on a global list of countries monitored.

But the APC manifesto in 2015 had stated that the Buhari presidency would provide lots of jobs.

The APC manifesto partly reads, “Relief – A decent life for every Nigerian; Jobs, three million new jobs a year; create three million new jobs a year through public works programmes and shifting the economy towards value-added production will be our primary economic target. The most effective way of tackling poverty is through job creation and radical reduction in unemployment. We will embark on macro and micro economic policies that focus like a laser beam on job creation. Job creation will be the APC government’s first priority.

“On poverty; Introduce the first phase of direct conditional monthly social security payment for 25 million of the poorest Nigerians. Health; Create a network of local health centres providing free services and drugs such that no one lives more than 5 kilometres from help.”

The party had also promised a “Housing and Urban Renewal Decent Housing” where it would bridge the 17million housing deficits in the country.

“An APC Government will work with the states to reduce slum-living in our cities, upgrade housing and provide access to key services by promoting private sector investment in urban renewal through land reform and investing in local infrastructure such as water and sanitation services

“The APC’s Commonsense Solutions will establish a National Housing Policy in co-operation with state governments with target of raising enough finance to build up to 1 million new houses a year over the next decade,” it had said.

Saharareporter