APC leader and presidential aspirant, Bola Tinubu recently advised President Muhammadu Buhari to enlist unemployed Nigerian youths into the army to help fight insecurity.
“Recruiting 50 million young Nigerians into the army will cut off terrorism supply line”, Tinubu said during a lengthy speech on insecurity at his 12th Colloquium which held in Kano on Monday, March 29, 2021.
He said: “We are under-policed and we are competing with armed robbers and bandits to recruit from the youths who are unemployed.
“Recruit 50 million youths into the army and take away from their recruitment source, what they will eat cassava, corn, will grow here.
“Don’t talk about illiteracy, anybody who can hold a gun, who can handle a gun, who can cock and shoot is technically competent to repair a tractor in the farm.”
Tinubu’s comment would surface a few weeks after NBS’s data showed Nigeria’s unemployment profile stood at about 33.3%, coming second to Namibia with an unemployment statistic at 33.4 percent.
Contradicting Tinubu’s viewpoint, economic analyst and commentators have posited that the option of enrollment in the army whether forceful or through psychological cajoling would not be the best approach to solving the situation of unemployment in Nigeria.
While the overwhelming position is that 21st Century economies are built on the spirit of private enterprise, with the government expected to support and provide the enabling environment for the private sector to thrive in order to create employment opportunities, there is an agreement that the government alone cannot solve the unemployment conundrum in Nigeria.
This calls to mind the yet-untapped potentialities of crypto trading and the e-Commerce sector in reversing Nigeria’s disastrous unemployment profile.
Job opportunities in the recently banned cryptocurrency market have continued to grow on a yearly basis as more investors pour into the market bringing funds and new companies along. A report by Glassdoor showed a growing demand for talent in the cryptocurrency industry, with job openings in the US rising by 300 percent year-on-year.
Also, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin could also help the unemployed facilitate small-scale international trade. Bitcoin enables these parties to sell products in exchange for Bitcoin and a boycott of traditional e-commerce systems, which often involves having to set up a merchant account with traditional banks, coupled with its attendant charges.
Cryptos, when fully adopted, will have a considerable impact on Nigeria, by increasing financial inclusion of individuals and companies. Particularly, by reducing the transaction fees and time, cross-border payments can be improved. This is beneficial for remittance payments, peer-to-peer lending, and international trade.
Government regulators would do well to tap into the potentials inherent in cryptos, to further strengthen the development of Africa’s largest economy.
Outside of crypto trading, E-commerce is another viable employment creating venture.
An article sourced from Brand Times opined that the e-commerce industry could potentially rise in market value to $50billion (N15.45 trillion) from $13billion (about N4.01 trillion) over the next decade which would positively affect the unemployment profile in Nigeria.