The Senate Committee on Labour, Employment and Productivity has expressed shock over the poor release of fund from the 2016 budget to the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), the nation’s apex job creation agency for the purpose of combating unemployment in the country.
The committee described as unacceptable the release of only N74 million out of N1.879 billion which represents only 3.94 percent of the 2016 budget of the agency.
Speaking during an oversight visit of the Directorate, Senate Spokesperson, Senator Sabi Abdullahi said it is disturbing for the federal government to say it is serious about job creation and yet fail to fund the agency responsible for job.
The Senator Abdullahi, who is also a member of the senator committee on labour expressed dissatisfaction and disappointment against ‘whoever who in charge of the release of funds to the agency’ (The Minster of Labour and the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Labour and Employment) for releasing only N74 million out of N1.879 billion budgeted fund meant for NDE to run its numerous programmes as the agency saddled with the responsibility of job creation.
Speaking directly to the minister of labour and employment, Chris Ngige who was represented by the permanent secretary in the ministry, Dr. Clement Illoh, the Senator said, “The Permanent Secretary you should pass our message to the Minister, we are not happy. We cannot at one point say we are pursuing employment generation, and the agency created to promote and facilitate employment generation is now being made to have chicken feed money for its programmes. It is not fair and it is unacceptable.”
Speaking to the management to NDE, he said, “From what I have seen, you have only be given the sum of N74 million and your percentage performance is 3.94%. My concern is, you have 24 programmes designed to stimulate employment for our youth and N1.879 billion is meant for your statutory programmes and you have just been given only N74 million, how then are you going achieve anything reasonable? I think it is important for us to state that whoever is involve in making NDE to have only 3.94% release of fund is not fair to Nigerians.
We have insurgency; and so many crisis in this country that are largely as a result of no jobs. For us to now say that employment generation is one of the major cardinal point of this government, and then someone will think that NDE which has so many series of programmes, should only be released N74 million out of N1.879 billion, it is indeed a sad development and unfortunate. So we the Senate, all of us need to add our voice to this unseriousness. We know the amount of pressure from the youth of this country. Many people have said that not addressing the unemployment issue in Nigeria is a time bomb.”
The Senate Spokesperson, then warned, “It is not too late for whoever that is responsible for the release of fund to NDE to be serious. We demand that whoever you are, you should do something about this. Seriously, this poor fund release is not acceptable to us. I am aware of other agencies that are being given up to 70 to 80% release of their budgeted fund for their programmes. If we are talking employment generation and we are saying that NDE is sick, it is not result oriented, what have we done to make it better, is N74 million out of N1.879 billion the effort or the best we can do to get NDE do what is expected of it? There is need for us to look at this truth and do the needful.”
