NIGERIA’s economic prospects are looking bleaker by the day. Not only are crude oil prices declining further, the national currency is taking a battering from major world currencies. Investors are fleeing the financial markets, while growth and unemployment projections by international agencies unanimously predict lean times ahead for the country. These portend a worsening unemployment time bomb waiting to explode, unless it is quickly defused.
Projections of global – and Nigeria’s – unemployment outlook released by the International Labour Organisation recently should jolt our policymakers out of their deceptive visions of success and back to earth where reality presents a starkly different picture.