EXPLAINING NIGERIA’S UNEMPLOYMENT RATE WITHOUT EVIDENCE

Ayodele Okunfolami urges the NBS to always use best practices to derive our data

Sometime ago, I had a friend from Togo who was teaching me French. I visited him the Sunday after the general elections in 2003 (20 years ago). While in his house, the results of the elections were being announced. He was shocked that Nigerians were complaining that the polls were rigged despite the electoral body detailing how it came about each result. This is how Jean Maire put it, “You Nigerians are funny. They are showing you on television the results of what each candidate and political party got from each polling unit, yet you say it was rigged. If it was my country, you will just hear ‘Eyadéma is the winner of the elections’”.

It is that kind of feeling Nigerian institutions battle with; doing their constitutionally assigned responsibility judiciously, using all the apparatus of the law and equipment available to them to a distrusting audience that does not fully understand the details behind the results. Sleeping through half a day listening to judges that had committed themselves for months going through tonnes of materials to come up with what judgement only for the public to disregard all their efforts.

So it happened that, using a different methodology it claims is the new global measuring standard, the agency responsible for collecting, compiling, analysing, interpreting, publishing, and disseminating statistical information relating to the socio-economic life and conditions of the people of Nigeria, the National Bureau of Statistics, came up with 4.1% as Nigeria’s unemployment rate. NBS has tried, like INEC and the tribunal to explain with evidence.

The science behind figures is correct because NBS practically redefined employment to a minimum of one hour per week from 40 and left the labour force bracket open instead of closing it at 64. Why fault NBS now if we reasoned with them when they told us nearly 133 million Nigerians are multidimensionally poor, when they monthly release inflation figures or when they told us Nigeria was in a recession?

First, just as one does not need a meteorologist to tell him the rain is about to fall or an economist to tell one the future of his finances if spending patterns remain unchanged, similarly Nigerians do not need any statistical body to tell it the unemployment situation is. A simple look at the crowds at accident scenes, motor parks, crusade grounds, political rallies and betting shops is enough to tell the unemployment rate of the country. The fact that, virtually every Nigerian family has had to feed at least one unemployed graduate for more than a year before he or she finds something to do is enough. It is that “something” that NBS is calling employment even if it means being under an umbrella booth for one hour weekly. There is no mention of the worth of the job financially or morally because percentages hide the actual volume and details behind the data. For example, the NBS itself says less than 7% of Nigerians work in the formal sector. This tells you the “something” that is defined as employment.

Besides, these definitions change from time to time. There was a time unemployment was defined as those within the employment bracket seeking work but cannot find. Implying that one must be willing to work before he can be termed unemployed.

Aside academic, who listens to NBS? Is it the policymakers that do not know how much crude Nigeria produces, how much petrol it consumes or can’t agree on the number and names on its poverty list that would listen to NBS? Governors didn’t listen when NBS revealed state-by-state unemployment two years ago. The ordinary man on the street is too bothered about the bare necessities of life that all these bar charts and graphs with upward green arrows or downward red arrows to know whether the POS business he is doing or the hair she is plaiting under the tree is termed employment.

So, like other institutions that tell us about upcoming environmental hazards or health epidemics, the NBS performs to viewers who only become attentive when their findings can be used for political reasons. And this is the perception that NBS might have been arm-twisted to tweak the figures to suit a political slant. Although I disagree and would always encourage that we must as a society continue to believe in our institutions. However, NBS’ inconsistency in releasing the employment figures calls for questioning. 

Why should a quarterly report last published in 2020 with 56.1% unemployment rate miss sevenstraight quarters only to come now with a new formula to give 4.1%? These suspicions would not have arisen had NBS been more consistent in its publications and forthcoming with its methodologies and not giving us the answer before showing the workings.

It is good and advisable to always use best practices to derive our data but caveating with World Bank or other international bodies to justify its methods does not always cut it. NBS should be seen to be working for Nigeria and Nigerians. America for example releases its employment figures monthly irrespective of which political party is in power. This is what you find in its NBS equivalent website: The Employment Situation for September 2023 is scheduled to be released on October 6, 2023, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. It is regular. It has nothing to do with the temperament of the boss. Like every other research worth its onions, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in its August report came with all the academic jargons but most importantly gave life to its numbers by stating specifically that unemployed persons increased by 514,000. It was scientific and at the same specific and didn’t need a global best practice method to sound patronising. Its goal is to the Americans. NBS should make their numbers more relatable.

But do I blame a poorly funded NBS? How it comes up with its numbers in a country that does not have periodic censuses should be commendable.

In summary, people don’t care what the thermometer says, if they are hot, the weather is bad. NBS figures is just another academic exercise to that jobless guy that works one hour in a week.

Secondly, NBS should continue to do its constitutionally assigned functions more diligently, consistently, transparently, and responsibly. Data is the ammunition any society needs to get ahead. Good enough, there are other private statistical bodies operating in the Nigerian space that NBS can be peered against.

To government at all levels, it should not even attempt to cash in on the NBS figures to score cheap political points. GlaxoSmithKline and other multinationals cannot be leaving Nigeria and they remain comfortable. Indigenous companies are folding up, high employing industries are becoming nonexistence while warehouses and depots are converted to religious centres. Those and more are enough data for our administrators to know that there is fire on the mountain.

Palliatives won’t solve it neither will handing out sewing nor grinding machines in the name of empowerments schemes. And governors directing the recruitment of 4,200 people into civilian JTF would neither solve banditry nor improve employment figures. What is needed is fixing Nigeria’s overall infrastructure beginning with electricity and finding ways of expanding the formal sector to facilitate more taxable employment. The Minister of Labour should not only be seen to be negotiating industrial actions but to be initiating policies and programmes that would generate jobs for Nigeria’s teeming population. It is then that NBS’s numbers can make sense.

 Okunfolami writes from FESTAC Town. Lagos