The Director of the University of Port Harcourt Business School, Professor Okay Onuchukwu has stressed the need for the Federal and State Governments to create an enabling environment for business to thrive in order to stamp out the level of unemployment in the country.
The University dons stated this on the sideline of a recent rating of Nigeria as the sixth most miserable country in the world.
Prof. Onuchukwu, on his own part advocated a knowledge based economy which would in turn produce more entrepreneurs and create employment opportunities. “What Government can do to encourage people to go into business is to provide an enabling environment and, power is number one, health is also important, because a healthy nation is a wealthy nation. Education is also very important for capacity building,” he stated.
He added that without adequate capacity building, no amount of resources put into the economy would make a difference.
He argued that if government was focused on doing the right things, individuals will also imbibe the culture and develop themselves.
Similarly, his counterpart at the Ignatius Ajuru University, Dr. Dorby Nnyando, advised the government to put in place workshops aimed at sensitizing graduates and young people as to help them become job creators and not job seekers. He said: “The workshop is not necessarily intended to teach people in the classroom, it is acquisition of knowledge”.
The university lecturer said that by so doing those who were naturally gifted would have the opportunity to display their potentials. The don noted that it is not the primary responsibility of the government to provide employment for the people. He cited the example of the compulsory National Youth Service Corps, which provides avenue for graduates to offer community service, adding that the NYSC has also in recent times included empowerment programmes in its activities, which enabled it to retain the graduates for meaningful engagement for a period of one year.
It will be recalled that Nigeria was rated the sixth most miserable country in the world six days ago by an economist from John Hopkins University in Baltimore, United States. Nigeria featured in Hanke’s (originator) Annual Misery index 2018, which ranked nations according to how happy or how sad the citizens are. Steve Hanke’s report was published in the Forbes magazine of March 28, 2019 where the Economist noted that misery index is calculated using economic indices like unemployment, inflation and the rates banks charge on loans.
