How To Curb Unemployment

 The immediate past Chairman, Lagos State House of Assembly Committee on Information, Security and Strategy, Hon. Ipoola Omisore, in this interview, speaks on the delay in passing the state version of the FOI bill and the lamentable state of unemployment in the country

What is the reason behind the non-passage of the Freedom of Information bill which has been before the state Assembly since the last session?

It is unfortunate. We were the first to start deliberation on the bill before the National Assembly, but due to the primaries of our party and the struggle by every one of us to come back, the passage of the bill was truncated. We were about to call for public hearing when it was time for the primaries and unfortunately, the National Assembly, which had been dilly-dallying with the bill, took the sail out of everything and it was passed at the national level. You also know that as soon as it is passed at that level, it becomes binding on all. Nevertheless, if only for cosmetic sake, being the first to start, we will go ahead, House committees would be set up in the next one week and I reckon I will also be a member of the Committee on Information again if not the chairman, and I will ensure it sees the light of day.

What are the reasons behind the formation of a foundation for the unemployed in Lagos State?

I will start by telling you that we just concluded a three-day empowerment programme for undergraduates in my constituency. During the electioneering, I met a lot of resistance from my constituents especially the unemployed graduates and I decided to open a register for them. At the last count, we had 610 unemployed graduates. I then thought that the best thing to do is to package something for them through the Skyblue Foundation which I established to help young Nigerians.

I did this with two partners and we taught them how to package themselves, dress well, prepare for job interviews and write resumes. We also taught them computer repairs and small-scale farming. This we think can make them stand on their own. Officials from micro-finance banks also came to speak with them on how to secure loans. We also used the opportunity to invite companies operating in the constituency to mix with the graduates and interact freely. The training programme which was attended by 715 unemployed graduates within my constituency alone is designed for the 57 local governments and local council development areas in order to inculcate in people the habit of creating employment.

One major thing we are doing with this is to make political office holders to know the number of unemployed graduates in their respective areas. We are moving next to Ikeja, then to Ifako-Ijaiye. We are getting the local government councils involved in this training. We are also making attempts to talk to micro-finance banks to give loans to these people at concessionary rates to these graduates, because what we are doing is to avert catastrophe for the nation. If a constituency like mine could have over 700 of them, imagine what is happening in other places. I also discovered that many of the unemployed graduates in my area did not know about the programme.

From your experiences now, what advice do you have for them?

The first advice is to parents. Any child who is in senior secondary school should be allowed to learn a vocation, whether the parents are rich or poor. That is why I was happy when Governor Fashola said he encouraged his son to go and learn carpentry. If a child knows how to fix hair, his parents would be happy because she would maintain herself with the trade. So, it would be a danger for any parent to allow his child to graduate without learning a vocation. For those who have graduated, I want to tell them they are in trouble because there are no jobs. In Lagos State, the salaries of workers is N4.2 billion as at now and there are 166, 000 workers for the civil service in the state. Now that the minimum wage is being demanded, it is going to hit N6.4 billion monthly. The allocation from the Federal Government to the state is only a little above N6 billion. It means that the allocation meant for us all would be taken by only 166,000 people in the state. Then the governor would be forced to freeze employment and there would be trouble. The art of setting up own business should, therefore, be embraced.