By Ishaya Ibrahim
Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, had claimed that the Statistician General of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Yemi Kale, had apologised for neglecting to capture blue collar jobs, especially in the agriculture sector in his labour force computation.
Two days after Shehu made the claim in a live television programme, Kale released the latest unemployment data which shows that joblessness has risen from 18.1 percent in Q3 2017 to 23.1 percent in Q3 2018.
This is not a good news for the government, especially when the elections are just two months away, and job creations have been the central theme of the campaigns.
The implication of the NBS data is that the total number of people classified as unemployed, which means they did nothing at all or worked too few hours (under 20 hours a week) increased from 17.6 million in Q4 2017 to 20.9 million in Q3 2018.
With an army of 20 million people looking for jobs that are unavailable, they could easily channel their anger into the ballot box.
A person is considered full time employed when he or she works for at least 40 hours a week. The economically active age of employment is between 15 and 64 years. Those in this category in Nigeria increased from from 111.1 million in Q3, 2017 to 115.5million in Q3, 2018.
But not all of those who are astronomically active can qualify to be categorised in the labour force.
The labour force is defined as people who are able and willing to work. In Nigeria, the labour force increased from 85.1 million in Q3,2017 to 90.5million.
While the unemployment figures rose by 500 basis point in the last one year, those categorised as underemployed make up 20 percent of the labour force. That is, the total combined unemployment and underemployment rates increased from 40.0 per cent in Q3 2017 to 43.3 per cent in Q3, 2018.
The data also showed that youth unemployment, that is, persons between the ages of 15 and 34, has averaged at 29.7 percent.
For unemployment rate by educational grouping, for graduates or people with post-secondary education, it is the highest. It stands at 29.8 percent.
Those with primary school education, according to the statistics, bear 19.5 percent of the unemployment burden. For secondary school certificate holders, it is 23.1 percent.
But Shehu had claimed that the computation of the unemployment statistics does not reflect jobs in the informal sector. He said even Kale admitted it in one of the Federal Executive Council meetings where the President later ordered him to tell the public his errors all.
According to the president’s spokesman, rice farmers alone have created 12 million jobs, which the NBS had failed to capture.
This claim by the spokesman of the president caused many Nigerians to require an explanation from Kale through his tweeter handle @sgyemikale.
In a response to one of such enquiry, the Statistician General tweeted: “Assuming what you claim was actually said, then I make it very clear that neither the statistician general nor NBS ever made any such admission at anytime to anybody and the unemployment computations does take into account all sectors, age groups & both rural & urban areas,” he said.
Investors and data users are wary of political interference in the work of data collating agencies. If they suspect that politicians have influence over the work of the NBS, that could affect its ability to attract trust, and overall cause skepticism in the minds of the investing public. It is therefore a surprise that Shehu could tell Nigerians that the President was dictating how the NBS should do their work.