FG to create 3 million jobs in three years – Osinbajo

The Vice-President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, yesterday expressed the plan of the federal government to add nothing less than three million jobs to the Nigerian economy within the next three years starting from 2016.

He stated that the three million jobs to be created largely in the private sector are within the framework of what he described as Buhari’s directive that all policies of government should be framed with the question, “how many jobs would the policy create?”

According to a statement issued by his spokesman, Laolu Akande, the Vice-President disclosed this while receiving the implementation report jointly packaged by the Job Creation Unit of the Presidency and the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, NESG on job creation and youth employment in the country.

“We are in a situation now when the only way is up,” Osinbajo said while thanking the NESG “for working so hard on this project”.

Under the proposal titled, “Strategic Framework & Implementation Plan for Job Creation & Youth Employment in Nigeria,” more than three million jobs would be created in the country within three years, starting in 2016, especially in Technology, Wholesale & Retail, Construction and Agro-allied sectors of the Nigerian economy.”

The 700,000 private sector jobs, majority of which are expected in the Agro-allied sector are expected to be created in the year under the initiative are said to be besides the 500,000 teaching jobs for unemployed graduates planned by the Buhari administration.

Akande quoted his principal as saying that the President had set job creation as the central focus of government policy when he instructed that policy planning must address the question, “how many jobs would the policy create?”

Even though job creation might be “painfully slow”, Osinbajo assured Nigerians that the Buhari presidency was addressing the constraints that businesses face including regulatory and institutional delays.

While noting that government and the private sector only need to work together and get it right this time, he said, “I am extremely excited at all that is available. We really have everything we need; we just need to get it right.”

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