By Adekunle Adekoya

First, Happy New Year to my readers and an apology; this column took an unannounced break from last year, which lasted till the previous week. It was occasioned by a long-overdue vacation. I am happy to be back, trying in my own little way to help move this country forward! No apologies, that cliche stuck with us since the June 12 days and the Abacha years.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience resuming work right in the middle of a nationwide strike called by organized labour to protest the new price of petrol. While the strike lasted, various government officials and other apologists were on TV and radio everyday, trying to explain why we should pay N140 for one litre of petrol.

t struck me that somehow, these apologists were repeating the argument of some of their predecessors under Abacha, Abdulsalami, and Obasanjo, and could not see that they were sounding like an overplayed CD.

This is because the promised benefits of previous fuel price hikes could not be seen because they remained promises, as a result of which the people have learnt not to trust their leaders on any issue, especially where the prices of petroleum products are concerned.

Promises

One of the promises this time around, as before, was the creation of more jobs, something that must be urgently done, not just to reflate the economy, but more importantly, to creatively engage the youths. Finance Minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala recently disclosed that the Federal Government is working on creating 370,000 new jobs every year.

That means, with more than three years still left of the Jonathan presidency, no less than 1,110,000 jobs would have been created by 2015. That is a great expectation — which incidentally is the title of a novel by Charles Dickens, which depicted the personal life of an orphan called Philip Pirip, or Pip. It is hoped Nigerians will not be orphaned by the managers of the national economy.

ICT jobs

In creating the 370,000 jobs targeted for this year, I hope proper attention is being focused on the ICT sector, which has the capacity to productively engage youths. To start with, the handset vendors should be brought into the effort. By now, the big handset makers who sell millions of their various brands in this country every year should have factories manufacturing and assembling them here.

All that talk about epileptic power and other infrastructure problems should recede; if the telcos can survive, hold and grow the market from 400,000 lines in 2001 to 90 million lines in 2011 — a mere decade, then the handset makers have no excuse but to opt into this economy fully by building their factories here. They can also run on diesel to produce made-in-Nigeria handsets.

If Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Huawei, Sony-Ericsson, Tecno and others have factories running here, imagine how many more jobs — skilled and unskilled — will be available to Nigerians. Local OEMs should also be brought into the picture to protect our own.

The same thing can be made to happen in the IT area — both the hardware and software to power computers can be manufactured in Nigeria; what we can’t understand is why it is not being done. Our free trade zones all over the country remain sparsely populated; these transnationals can populate them for our benefit.

If the GSM firms can survive on diesel, handset makers can, and should be made to.