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Why government cannot create jobs

By Editor
23 December 2015   |   3:43 am
SIR: Disorientation leads a government to focus in job creation rather than good governance. Creating jobs is not part of good governance; it can be a mark of misplacement of priority. The basic functions of a government are provision of security and enabling environment.

Unemployment-2-Copy

SIR: Disorientation leads a government to focus in job creation rather than good governance. Creating jobs is not part of good governance; it can be a mark of misplacement of priority. The basic functions of a government are provision of security and enabling environment. Of course, in the process of providing security and enabling environment, jobs will be created for some citizens termed functionaries. Otherwise, job creators include agriculture, manufacturing, service provision, artisanship, merchant-ship, importation and exportation, as well as the entertainment industry with which sports should normally be grouped. Christianity and Islam have added a new dimension: clericalism. Even African traditional diviners don’t live on doing divination, but on farming, hunting, weaving, etc.

The basic means by which a government is expected to get revenue is by taxation, but petroleum and federal allocation disoriented too many Nigerian rulers. They use the largesse from federal account as they deem fit, such as using public funds to celebrate religious festivals and sponsor pilgrimages in an officially secular society.

President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB), is a traveller and not a leader in any serious sense. The economy depreciates as Nigeria’s currency keeps falling against hard currencies. Fuel scarcity lingers and there is no petroleum minister to explain and reassure Nigerians. The legislature keeps mute.

Too many Nigerians, even in the Ivory Tower, don’t follow the principle of see, judge, and act, but sentiment and emotion in the name of Christianity and Islam. Too many Christians and Muslims are misled to believe that God wrote a book containing all earthly and heavenly wisdoms. Are all books not written by some human beings who include some of their own prejudices therein?

Take, for instance, the prevalent prejudice of overwhelming heterosexuals against few homosexuals; as few as those who have six fingers and six toes instead of the common five. Yet, that prejudice reflects in holy books as “Word of God”. Too many Christians and Muslims have been oriented to believe without thinking, thereby affecting quality of life negatively in Nigeria. That’s the prop and anchor of Nigeria’s rulers, including PMB.

• Pius Abioje,
University of Ilorin.

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