The federal government has said on several occasions that it would kickstart its social security programs from 2016. In a bid to actualize that, the FG said on Monday that plans were underway to register all unemployed citizens across the country.
The acting Director General of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Mr. Olakunle Obayan, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja during the official handover by the former Director General, Alhaji Abubakar Mohammed, who was retiring after 26 years in service. He said new initiatives would be coming on stream from next year to “take care of the social security issues” in the country.
Speaking on the plans for registration of unemployed Nigerians, Obayan said the NDE has a list already, but “we are going to improve on the information we have in our data base and we are going to make sure that it is something we can access from our different locations, even if you are down in the hinterland, you should be able to do so.
“We are going to tenaciously pursue the employment generation activities of NDE, and we are going to expand their scope,” he said.
He promised to begin to drive the process immediately he settles down from this week.
On the issue of funding the vision of the NDE, the DG said, “Right now, we are going into PPPs so that we can extend the mileage of our funds and how many people we can reach and several collaborations as well that we are getting into.
“Some of them with the members of the national assembly, world bank, we will want to partner with DFID, ILO and so many development partners, but asides that, we try to do more in 2016 because government does not have that kind of money right now, and actually employment generation, and job creation should not be solely for government; private sectors generally, they should come on board.
“This is one of the reasons we are planning a stakeholders’ forum, where the private sector will actually know its role. It is not strictly for government, these people we train, are not only for government, they are for all.”
