Different political parties and candidates campaign on the promise of creating millions of employment opportunities for citizens. The political parties and candidates insist that they are feeding the people by creating these jobs. Despite the number of employment announced and created over the years, there are not many tangible products to show for them. Instead, few people are employed in public offices to move files and sit around without real productivity. This requires a check on employment as investment for productivity as opposed to employment as political settlement in Nigeria.
Progressive societies are formed by the agreement of members of the society to collaborate for their common safety and sustenance.[1] They collaborate to refine, multiply, distribute and use their human and mineral resources for solving their problems.[2] So, they develop their people’s industrial capacities to discover, extract and distribute natural resources for common good. The leaders of these societies evaluate the best management-option for maximizing resources and its effect in the society.
What is employment? Employment is the fact of having a paid job.[3] It is a set of activities which an individual does in order to earn a living. Government often provide employment by regulating the industrial activities of primary needs and enabling individual initiatives for other productions. Through its policies, governments enable proper and far-reaching development through private initiatives for creating employment.
What are the purposes of employment?
- Contribution to the cycle of production: employment enables citizens to contribute to any of the different stages of making goods and services in the society. There are three sectors of production[4]
- Primary (extraction or gathering): this is the process of extracting or harvesting natural resources in one’s environment in their crude form. Activities in this sector includes Mining (coal, copper, crude oil or gold), fishing, forestry and farming.[5]
- Secondary production (processing): the process of refining, manufacturing and constructing finished good from the extracted crude resources. This includes steel work, vehicle-constructions, building, purification and many other industrial processes that prepares the resources for use.[6] The secondary stage of production may take more time and employs more number of people than the primary stage.
- Tertiary production (distribution): This is the process of distributing refined resources for the development and satisfaction of human needs in the society. It involves legal, accounting, customer and distribution services.[7] This sector of production requires even more manpower to calculate, preserve, secure, regulate and adequately distribute resources to reach wider areas of the human society. The success of the tertiary production is dependent on the availability of the refined resources from primary and secondary. Doctors treat patients, when drugs are made available, food vendors and utility suppliers are able to supply what has been extracted and refined for use.
- Improvement of human capacity: employment is a higher level of investment in the labour force of a society. The training, work engagement, salary, holidays, welfare and incentives are all meant to develop the worker’s disposition for productivity.
- Contribution to self-actualization: some scholars insist that people are born with specific talents and dispositions for their work in the human society. These talents often stay dormant until they are activated by constant practice along the line of the individual’s genius. A gifted architect may never actualize his architectural potentials if he is unemployed or employed in unsuitable sectors. So, employment is intended to bring out and utilize the best in every citizen for the improvement of life in the society.
- Provision of resources for livelihood: by employment, people earn resources for their sustenance, development and wellbeing.
- Fulfilment: human beings obtain a sense of worth, happiness and pride by contributing to worthy causes. Employment provides people with the opportunity to be relevant and fulfilled by working for the development of the human society.
These are the major goals of progressive societies for maintaining the three sectors of production. Unfortunately, many Nigerians are made to see public sector employment as settlement for kinsmen, friends and loyalists. The militarized government[8] confiscates and auctions the mineral resources that could have been used for production in Nigeria. The Nigerian Mineral and Mining Act states that:
“… all lands in which minerals have been found in Nigeria and any area covered by its territorial waters or constituency and the Exclusive Economic Zone shall, from the commencement of this Act be acquired by the Government of the Federation…”[9] “No person shall search for or exploit mineral resources in Nigeria or divert or impound any water for the purpose of mining except as provided in this Act.”[10] “The property in mineral resources shall pass from the Government to the person by whom the mineral resources are lawfully won, upon their recovery in accordance with this Act.”[11]
Hence, the Nigerian government collaborates with the foreign-allied private sector to export crude resources, and to import finished goods. With this, the major employment opportunities from the primary and secondary sectors are taken away from Nigerians. After selling the resources that are vital for production, Nigerian-government is limited to buying and sharing foreign goods. Hence, Nigerian government mainly employs people for buying and sharing foreign goods which could have been produced in Nigeria.
Nigerians do not work to obtain money through actual production, they just sell any available crude resource and share the money, while the private sector import and sell foreign products to Nigerians. Since the main job is to share the money from crude resources, public offices are created to settle political loyalists and natives. More posts are created in different public sectors for taxation, security, office aides, distribution, schools and healthcare centres. All that the loyalists and kinsmen need for employment (sharing without production) is the basic academic qualification from any field.
When people are given employment as settlement, there is no pressure on them to build themselves, nor be productive. They do not really add to the economy, instead they to suck on the proceeds from crude resources. And since they have not learnt to produce anything, they resort to crime when they are threatened or sacked.
In summary, the difference between employment in Nigeria and employment in progressive societies is productivity. Progressive societies pursue employment as investment in the society’s labour force for more productivity, while non-productive societies create employment as settlement for political manoeuvres. The seizing and selling of People’s mineral resources in Nigeria by government renders the public workforce unproductive. Hence, the job of sharing proceeds from crude resources portrays employment as settlement instead of investment for productivity.
Any employment that does not lead to sustainable productivity is both a waste of resources and a reward for laziness. And until different sections of Nigeria retrieve rights to their resources for meaningful production, Nigerians may never see employment as investment but as settlement.
[1] Cf. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan Ed. Michael Oakeshott (New York: Macmillan, 1962).p187
[2] Leonard Read, I Pencil, https://fee.org/resources/i-pencil-audio-pdf-and-html/
[3] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/employment
[4] http://www.learnmanagement2.com/industrialsectorsprimarytertiarysecondary.htm
[5] Ibid
[6] Cf. Ibid
[7] Cf. Ibid
[8] S. O. Oyedele, Federalism in Nigeria, In Issues in contemporary political economy of Nigeria. edited by Hassan A. Saliu. (Ilorin: T.A. Olayeri Publishers, 1999). p57
[9] Nigerian minerals and mining act 2007 act no. 20, chapter 1, Part 1, Section 1, paragraph 2
[10] Nigerian minerals and mining act 2007 act no. 20, chapter 1, Part 1, Section 2, paragraph 1
[11] Nigerian minerals and mining act 2007 act no. 20, chapter 1, Part 1, Section 1, paragraph 3