Sometime last month, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released its Nigeria Labor Force Survey Report for Q4 2022 and Q1 2023. To call the findings of the report shocking would be very apt. 4.1% was a huge drop from the former 33% unemployment rate.
A little background: The NBS is adopting a methodology proposed by the International Labour Organization (ILO) which states that to be considered as employed, a person should have worked for at least 1 hour during the week in exchange for wages or profit. This methodology is used in many countries around the world including the US, and many European countries.
To be fair to the bureau, we were informed of this change a while ago (since last year), so any outrage or shock that we expressed about it was just the Nigerian flair for drama at work. Looking at the stats at first, I thought that we were trying to better define the problem in Nigeria as Underemployment as opposed to unemployment. Simply put, unemployment means that while you want to, you are not doing anything that puts money in your pocket, while underemployment is supposed to mean that you (or I) are not reaching your full potential at the job you’re currently holding. So where I truly was shocked was when I saw that our underemployment rate was just 12.2%! Are you telling me that almost everyone is employed and content with their current job? Is the problem of unemployment and underemployment a myth?
The main issue with these stats is that they use a methodology that doesn’t really align with our context. For example, underemployed people are defined as “…working less than 40 hours weekly and declaring themselves willing and available to do more work”. In a country where most of its youth have been forced to become CEO of one business or another, you don’t really expect me to tell you that I’m willing to do more, do you? That would mean that my enemies are winning (yes, this example is alluding to one of the ways we lie to ourselves and skew data in this country).
I read this article by Feyi Fawenhimi about how we should create methodologies that serve the purpose that they are created for rather than just going with whatever everyone else is going along with just to feel among. I would also add that we need to be honest with ourselves in this country. We have a problem with youth who are not being engaged enough, at least not in the most productive ventures. We see it around, but we want to bury our heads in the sand. This level of delusion can have catastrophic effects like our government not knowing how to (or whether to) fix the problem of unemployment in Nigeria, leading unemployed people to crime. This leads me to my next story…
Robin Hood or Just Robbing the Hood
On a normal working day, someone woke up on Twitter (X) and made a wild assertion that more boys would go into tech rather than Yahoo if tech bros housed them and fed them while teaching them how to code too.
This statement annoyed me for a couple of reasons:
It compares tech to scamming (which is just theft)
It makes it look like tech is a charity organization and not an actual career path.
It makes a case for the trope of Yahoo boys claiming that they are victims too.
I will focus on the third point because if I write what I think about the whole issue, we’ll be reading this newsletter till November. Plus, that’s the point that gets me angriest, and I’d love to see how my belligerence looks in written form.
Yahoo boys are very delusional, and their fans even more so because they don’t even gain anything from it. These people believe that they do what they do just because they don’t have any means of feeding and or earning (which the NBS has shown is a lie *wink, wink*). We all know that it is in fact greed and the need to make quick money that pushes this behaviour.
You cannot be a thief and honestly expect us to like you because you were poor before you started stealing. That’s ridiculous. It shouldn’t be something that should be debated at all!
Pictured above: A thief trying to explain why (s)he is a thief
Hero worship and awe of these people should be destroyed. How? We need more busts by the EFCC, let them see that the only thing crime pays is jail time. Also, we need more success stories from the legitimate world. The person mustn’t even be holding a laptop: The doctor who made it, the mechanic, the carpenter who got to send their children to a better school, to build a better life. Finally, education needs to be brought to the fore. There is always more beyond our horizon, and we need our schools to show that. More funding (even by private parties) should go into providing quality education even for the “poorest of the poorest”.
Nigeria, we have a problem with delusion. And the more we lie to ourselves, the worse it will get. There will be fewer jobs in productive sectors, criminals will gain more legitimacy because “after all, there are no jobs” and everyone will keep telling themselves that there is nothing wrong with the root of the problem. Fix up your methodology!
What have I been up to?
This weekend, I pulled off one of my greatest feats yet. I hope that it yields results, and if it doesn’t, I’m still good with it. Knowing that I could accomplish what I did is enough.
Read this article by Oo Nwoye about not throwing stones. It’s a goodie
I still work with Sycamore. Check out what we do here!
Today’s newsletter is dedicated to Jennifer. Congrats fam! I look forward to billing you.
Thank you for reading this far. Before you leave, please let me know in the comments about any system you use when you’re trying to learn something new. I’d greatly appreciate that.
Sayanora from this end.
-The Juice.
Thanks Juice