Shift Focus To SMEs, Labour, Industrialists Tell FG, States

By our Correspondents  |

With more than 23 million Nigerians now jobless, stakeholders in the industrial sector have insisted that Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) remain the solution to engage unemployed Nigerians.

To this end, they urged the federal and state governments to refocus and shift attention to SMEs by creating the needed operating environment through friendly monetary policies and interventions.

The experts who spoke with LEADERSHIP Sunday at the weekend said the continuous job losses was an eye opener that the operating environment was not comfortable and conducive for existing businesses, hence the need to downsize to reduce their operating costs.

They urged government at all levels to begin to pay special attention to SMEs by giving them the necessary support to thrive, adding that if the unemployment growth is left unaddressed it would be a looming time-bomb on the security architecture of the country.

The director-general, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Dr Muda Yusuf, said the unemployment situation was worsening and that the factors were clear.

“First, we had recession in 2020 which led to loss of jobs, the #EndSARS saga too affected a lot of businesses, paralysing some businesses and some have not recovered till now. We have the pandemic which led to the lockdown of some sectors till date, and this led to contraction in the economy.

“Also, there was weak purchasing power, business performance is generally down, all these contributed to deterioration in the employment situation,” he said.

He added that the security problem was also a factor because agriculture is a major employer of labour, even as the current security challenge affects a lot of agricultural activities which also led to loss of jobs.

He noted that many of those who were supposed to be on their farms are in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps because the environment is insecure.

“We exited recession by the fourth quarter of 2020 with a positive GDP growth of 0.11 per cent and we expect things will continue to get better as the economy is on the positive growth with oil prices looking up which is good for the recovery of the economy, good for our reserves and foreign exchange. Now with the vaccine, the economy will continue to be better,” he said.

To solve unemployment, he added: “We need to look at the SMEs; they are critical to job creation even though the macro-economic…