A frontline Employment Law expert and Chief-Convener of the Nigerian Governors Mandate Forum (NGMF), Charles Ude, has said that in spite of the programmes put in place by the present administration to reduce unemployment and spice-up economic activities in the country, President Muhammadu Buhari’s government may not have enough time to fix its economic blunders of the past two years.
He stated this on Thursday during an exclusive chat with DAILY POST in Abuja.
According to him, the Nigerian economy was already in bad shape before the present administration took over power.
However, the situation worsened through some mistakes the government made in its early days.
Ude also said though the various economic programmes President Buhari had rolled out such as; the N-Power, the N-SIP, and the Bank of Industry (BoI) loans to young Nigerians who wish to go into entrepreneurship have placed his government on a good pedestal to fix its blunders, the federal government may need to do more to convince Nigerians that its policy of diversifying the economy away from oil was not mere lip-service.
He added that the state governors equally needed to do more for their people, “because they ‘appear not to be doing enough’ to ameliorate the people’s worsening economic plight.”
The legal luminary said: “You know Nigeria was in trouble before this regime came in. Having come in, President Buhari and his team made some mistakes as well.
“But now, I think they are now in a good position to fix the economic problems plaguing the nation. The problem before them is time. I don’t know if they have the time. The tenure is just four years and they have done two of it.
“I don’t know whether the economic diversification policy of President Muhammadu Buhari’s government is mere lip-service.
“I am aware that this government has a lot of facilities and things for young people; part of which is to reduce unemployment in the labour market. There are also programmes that are targeted at graduates who are under 35 years and those that not even graduates.
“The Federal Ministries and Agencies running these programmes includes: Ministries of Trade and Industry, Budget and National Planning, Labour and Employment, and then the Bank of Industry (BoI).
“They have incentives for people who are interested in entrepreneurship like small businesses, and the recent ones – the N-Power and the N-SIP projects – which the Acting President has just talked about. So, these programmes are there just to encourage people to do whatever they can do.
“By and large, I think they are doing okay.
“It’s like one pays to move into a house. He or she does not know how living in the apartment would be until one move in and discovers that some many things that make life easy are not in place. Such a person cannot function
“But the state governors need to do more. They appear not to be doing enough. The governors really need to do more for their people than the President”. (DailyPost)
