The House of Representatives on Wednesday asked the Federal Government to declare an emergency in the labour sector to address crippling unemployment in the country.
It also sought to review the government’s blueprint for the creation of three million jobs per annum and give the necessary legislative backing to realise it.
The House noted that in 2011, the National Bureau of Statistics put the country’s unemployment rate at 24 per cent of the population.
The sponsor of the motion on the matter, Mr. Kingsley Chinda, raised the alarm that the “figure is likely to rise to 70 per cent by the end of 2015.”
Chinda expressed worries that youths were the most affected as thousands graduating from higher institutions yearly had no jobs to do.
“Given the large number of graduates that are turned out yearly from the universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and other tertiary institutions in Nigeria and abroad, the unemployment rate in Nigeria is increasing very rapidly and could explode by 2020 if pragmatic steps are not taken to check same”, part of the motion read.
However, the House passed another resolution, which it said could help in addressing unemployment.
It called on the government to implement its project on the recycling of abandoned vehicles for scrap metals.
The House said abandoned vehicles on the country’s highways “constitute a clear and present danger to the more than seven million vehicles that operate on Nigerian roads daily.”
The House directed the Federal Road Safety Corps to remove and send all such vehicles to designated scrap centres within three months.
For example, the sponsor of the motion, Mr. Nicholas Osai, told the House that the scrap project, which was to start in the Federal Capital Territory, would create about 3,000 jobs for youths.
Osai mentioned Apapa-Oshodi Expressway; Lagos-Badagary Expressway; Lagos-Ibadan-Ogbomoso-Ilorin-Jebba-Minna Expressway; and Abuja-Lafia-Makurdi-Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway as some of the roads where many vehicles had been abandoned.
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