Dele Sobowale

“There is nothing more wasteful than doing diligently what should not be done at all.” President Jonathan took a plane load, or more, of people to Davos, Switzerland for what was billed as the World Economic Forum, WEF.

The entourage included several ministers, some governors, captains of industry and others too numerous to mention. Although it is billed as a global forum for tackling worldwide economic problems, it is nevertheless noteworthy that not all the presidents or prime ministers were in attendance. The reason is not difficult to discover.

The WEF had in recent years become a forum for the well-employed, well-paid and well-fed to gather and take care of their own interests – while pretending that they care about the jobless, the poor and those without hope.

Yet, the number of unemployed people globally has been increasing every year for over 10 years and the distribution of wealth has become increasingly skewed in favour of the wealthy and against the middle class and the poor.

Some of the reasons are clear. Virtually all the major multi-nationals in Davos were in search of nations where they would receive all sorts of heavy incentives before deciding to establish factories which are capital-intensive and employ few people – even though job creation was usually the reason for granting the concessions they were granted in the first instance.

Allied with that is the fact that increasingly, the jobs being created are service jobs and information technology oriented.

They generate very few jobs while yielding huge revenue to the shareholders. Meanwhile, technology is rapidly wiping out lots of jobs in every economy – from emerging economies to the most advanced and there is nothing the whole world can do about it. Two examples will illustrate the point.

Banking sector is shedding jobs faster than they can be created elsewhere and keen observers of the sector should be able to see it. First, the ATM reduced the need for tellers nationwide. At least 130,000 jobs were lost on this account alone and more are on the way.

Allied to the ATM is the widespread use of e-payment and the cashless economy. Again, more jobs are being erased everyday. It is estimated that a typical bank will need no more than 20 per cent of its current workforce to operate in less than 10 years from now.

Post offices worldwide and in Nigeria are also becoming major victims of technology among which are the e-mail, Facebook, twitter and other means of personal communications which get the message there faster and cheaper.

The Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) can provide the official figures; but, whatever they are, they will most probably reveal the sharp drop in letters posted or registered, stamps purchased and vehicles needed to transport them.

Ten years ago, the NIPOST dreaded the Yuletide avalanche of greeting cards and other pieces of mail. Now, it wishes those halcyon days are back.

Now greetings are sent on the handset and few people even remember the location of the post office in their area. Since greeting cards account for a vast majority of the mail carried in the past by NIPOST, the decline in the use of cards had dealt a mortal blow to card manufacturers and most have quietly closed down.

There is no need to list seriatim all the sectors of the global and Nigerian economy which had been devastated by technology. There is probably no sector which had not been visited by the scourge of technology. More worrisome is the fact that, rather than abating, the rate of job destruction, on account of technology, will most probably accelerate in years to come chewing up more jobs and leaving millions of people worldwide with life-time unemployment. Already, close to a generation of youths globally have been caught in the vice grip of life-time of joblessness – including Nigerian youths. I have a drawer full of CVs from young Nigerian graduates seeking employment; some have been with me for more than three years and all my efforts to get them placed have proved mostly abortive. Once in a while, the kid gets lucky and I help find a job. But, it occurs so infrequently that it might all be regarded as absolute failure. Many of the friends and associates I call on account of job seekers had since stopped picking the phone. I don’t blame them.

So, when the President took a plane load of people to the WEF, I was under the impression that the number one item on their agenda would be hustling for multi-nationals to come and establish businesses here which are more labour-intensive and can employ lots of people. Better still, I thought the representatives of the countries in developing countries would get the global community committed to developing plans to increase jobs. Instead, there was a lot of talk about ending the income inequality between the extremely wealthy and the rest of us. But, it is obvious that the only way to close the gap is to give the people earning nothing now something to do to earn income.

Instead, the President’s entourage consisted of people like Jim Ovia, Tony Elumelu, Dangote etc; in short, those whose banks and businesses are already capital-intensive and ICT-based and who have little interest in agriculture or the small-scale, medium scale and micro-enterprises which are still labour-intensive and can create more jobs rapidly.

It was a bloody jamboree.