By Chris Ochayi

The Federal Government has embarked on thorough and comprehensive survey and data collections in order to determine the accurate level of unemployment statistics in each state of the federation.

The Minister /Deputy Chairman of National Planning Commission, Dr Shamsuddeen Usman, said, “the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, is in the middle of conducting a very detailed comprehensive survey on unemployment across the whole country and this will become a quarterly figure”

The minister was responding to a question during a media chat with Journalists in Gombe, Gombe State Capital, North Eastern Nigeria, after a ceremonial flag- off of the States’ GDP Computation in the State. He said the kind of survey being worked out now by the government will correctly determine the level of unemployment statistics in each state that differentiates it with other.

According to him, “even within one state, what is the situation in Gombe state for instance, that differentiates it from other states? The National Bureau of Statistics is in the middle of conducting a very detailed comprehensive survey on unemployment across the whole country and this will become a quarterly figure.”

In fact we will use the GDP that is generated to be able to tackle unemployment better. Right now there is so much talk about unemployment, but only recently that we are even beginning to really try to understand; what is the nature of this unemployment? What is the breakdown of it? What are the regional characteristics of it?

Accordingly, Dr Usman disclosed that, there is now a change from the way Nigeria used to solve problems. The approach of throwing money or policies at problems in the search for solutions without even trying to understand the nature of the problem is over.

“Government is now trying to understand the nature of this unemployment problem. The unemployment situation in Kano is different from that of Lagos. We need to understand such peculiarities as what are the age groups, what are the breakdown between men and women? What are the different employment opportunities that exist in each state?”

The Minister, described unemployment situation as a problem in Nigeria,  but pointed out that, the more data that you generate, the better you are able to tackle the problem by having specific targeted policies that are able to address unemployment.

Buttressing his point further, Dr Usman, gave an example of a recent surveys conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics in conjunction with SMEDAN to estimate the total number of SMEs in the country. “Tentatively the work is still in progress, but it will interest you to know that, they indicated that they got a figure of 17 million SMEs.