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Against the backdrop of high unemployment figures and related rise in crime rate, civil society actors in Rivers State have called on the incoming administration to, “as a matter of urgency,” prioritize the creation of jobs for the teeming population of the unemployed in the state.
A second quarter (Q2) of 2020 report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicated that Rivers State had a total number of 1.7 million (1,714,188) unemployed people. According to the report, “Under State disaggregation, Imo State reported the highest rate of unemployment with 48.7%, followed by Akwa Ibom State and Rivers State with 45.2% and 43.7% respectively.”
In separate interviews in Port Harcourt, executive director of We the People, Ken Henshaw, and gender and development expert, Rita Kigbara, linked the high unemployment rate to an equal rise in crime and youth-related violence in the state.
The high unemployment and poverty figure preceded a May 2020 report by the NBS which showed Rivers earned N140 billion in internally generated revenue in 2019, ranking second behind Lagos.
Ken Henshaw noted that “In terms of the economy of Rivers State, the Nyesom Wike administration was poor. That is the truth. Yes, we have seen infrastructural upgrades, mostly road construction, flyovers. The bulk of the resources of Rivers State has gone into the construction of flyovers. But the issue is: How many employment opportunities did he create? How much employment did the government of Rivers State create in 8 years?
“Towards the next administration by Sim Fubara, I do not know if it will be different. I haven’t seen an indication. As a public policy analyst, I have not seen anything in the statements of Sim Fubara, in his campaign messages of Sim Fubara, in his manifesto, I have not seen anything that indicates to me that his administration would be radically different from that of Nyesom Wike.
“But if the incoming administration really cares about Rivers State, it needs to focus critically in the area of human capital development. Do you know how many young people that graduated in the last 8 years? Where have they been employed, where did the government create employment.
“We are having a situation where crime is on the increase. More and more young people are dying every day, getting incinerated and burnt in the pots of crude oil, where they are distilling crude oil for sale.
“Young men in Rivers State are engaged in criminality, armed robbery and so on. All the entrances into the state, from the Owerri-Port Harcourt Road to the Bayelsa end of the East-West Road and the Akwa Ibom end. These are no-go areas. Criminality has increased tremendously.
“Communities have become hotbeds of violence and criminality. The waterways are very insecure, conflict-ridden and hotbeds of kidnapping and criminality. A lot of young people in Rivers State are jobless.
“The incoming government must be able to immediately call a meeting and try to set up an agenda for Rivers people to create jobs, generate employment and ensure that people are gainfully employed. The government must declare a state of emergency in youth unemployment, and say ‘we will target creating this number of jobs for young people in this length of time.
“This is how the black soot stops, because this is how kpo-fire ends. This is how the armed robbery stops, because this is how you stage the youths who are engaged in criminality out.
“But there may be those you do not employ directly. A policy in employment would be to revamp the agricultural sector. The people of Rivers State have made a living from farming and fishing. We must return to what is endemic in the state and strengthen the agricultural sector. So that people can easily take a loan, go set up a farm and run a business.
“The next government must turn its attention to micro-credit facilities. We need to have a system where people, the driving mass of young people in Rivers State, who have no job, but are full of ideas, those people who have done coding, who have learnt entrepreneurship but have no capital to start, they must be a way that the government of Rivers State can validate their experience, expertise and their hunger and support them to not only make a living, but also create employment for other people.
“Rivers State needs to start producing. It must become a hub of production. This is what the next government of Rivers State needs to focus on,” he said.
Rita Kigbara, gender and development expert, however stressed the impact on women, noting that “the future for Rivers women should be brighter than it is now. I am saying that because seeing the development activities of the present government, a lot has been geared towards construction of roads and other projects.
“But a lot of women in the last years have in one way suffered from the unemployment stance of the governor, or the policies around unemployment, which I will say he has not done since the last 8 years. I think that has affected women a lot. Because when it comes to the civil service, for instance, a lot of women get opportunities into the civil service. That I think has been affected.
“Then in terms of programmes for women in the state, such as empowerment programmes. Usually, what we see in every government, we see that the wife of the governor carries out a lot of programmes that empower women in the rural areas, to just help them improve their livelihood. But with this government, I want to say that we’ve seen very little of that kind of intervention from both the governor and even the First Lady in terms of using her office to mobilize and empower women.
“I think that in the next few months to come, when the next government takes over, I expect that a lot of attention should be focused on the areas where we’ve had a lot of gaps in Rivers State,” she said.
Kigbara noted that “Women suffer more actually (in a bad economy) than men. They suffer both direct and indirect consequences of unemployment. It is indirect because even if we are talking about say their husbands that are being employed, you know that in the average African home, the man is the breadwinner.
“A lot of women who would have been empowered in the last 8 years, have lost that opportunity and that tells a whole lot about the population of women in terms of their economic power in the state,” she said.
