Tackling unemployment in Nigeria through digital employment
By Adamu Faith Mercy
The unemployment rate in Nigeria is alarming. As an undergraduate in Nigeria, one is already bombarded with the worries of securing a job after school. The sad truth is that it only comes to a few. With every passing year, the various universities in the country graduates students into the hands of the government to provide jobs for them, gone are the days when the government grants jobs to citizens immediately they graduate, one would think the government isn’t doing enough but even though the government invests in creating jobs through industrial investment, there wouldn’t still be enough jobs for the entire populace.
There are numerous graduates with very good certificates and marketable degrees, some of these graduates even have skills to go with their knowledge of formal education but they lay in wait for the government to provide jobs for them without utilising their full potentials. The problem of unemployment has become very critical that there is now an issue of slot purchase in the country, where people are asked to pay for a job slot by highly corrupted individuals who have been entrusted with national responsibilities.
The problem now is that even those who have been underemployed are still not satisfied with their income and status quo because they believe their knowledge is underestimated and does not equate to their pay.
The solution therefore is digital employment. On July 28, President Bola Tinubu said the federal government is willing to support Google, the multinational tech giant, to create one million digital jobs in Nigeria. It is worthy to note that he government is actively involved in fixing the unemployment problems facing Nigeria. Digital employments are created through the application of information and communications technologies (ICT) to a new or existing activity or process. The internet is a networking platform which is not highly utilised by people, especially the youths who are usually carried away by the glamour of the net, and barely use the internet for what it was created for, to simplify life.
Through the use of the internet with little to no skills required but just knowledge of how to use a smartphone, laptop, tablet or a desktop one can be opened to various online job opportunities, some of these jobs do not require a degree but just knowledge of what is being asked. They are flexible and can be done at ones convenience such jobs include: online teaching, medical transcription, language translation, content writing, online typing, freelance blogging affiliate marketing and many more. Many a times people feel disoriented and discouraged when they aren’t accepted, it is important to keep trying. There are different websites to get jobs online such as: fiverr, LinkedIn, upwork and many others with good pay.
Without doubt, with the rate at which technology is moving, more online job opportunities would be created and youths would be more digitally oriented. Online jobs require patience and dedication, they are mostly stay at home jobs so the least required from an employee is to put in their best.
ADAMU FAITH MERCY,
Faculty of mass communication,
Ahmadu Bello University Zaria.
