Agriculture! A Veritable Tool for Reducing the Rate of Unemployment in Nigeria

S.O.W Toluwase The University of Education, P.M.B 200, Ikere-Ekiti

sowtoluwase@yahoo.co.uk 08062294631,08082079027,08058678319

Abstract—This paper emphasizes the Agricultural sector of the economy as a veritable tool for reducing the rate of unemployment in Nigeria. Unemployment is one of the major critical problems facing the nation despite the endowed, diverse and infinite resources of both human and material that are abound in the country. However, years of negligence and adverse policies have led to the under – utilization of these resources. One of these is the agricultural resources that spanned from North to South and West to the East which had once been the mainstay of the of the country’s economic resources, but now left in the hand of the aged ones still depending on the primitive methods of farming. This paper focus on agricultural sector of the economy as the sector that can provide mass employment to the teaming unemployed Nigerian without having an adverse effect on the other sectors of the economy.

Keywords- Agriculture, Veritable tool, Unemployment and Nigeria

I. INTRODUCTION

The need to avert the negative effects of unemployment has made the tackling of unemployment problem a great concerned in Nigeria. The unprecedented commitment of the government to seriously address the need for employment generation is a propitious opportunity to implement strategies for generating mass employment in the country through the agricultural sector of the economy.

Unemployment is one of the developmental problems that face every developing nations including Nigeria. Statistics portray that service oriented and industrial workers living in developing nations account for about two-thirds of the unemployed (Patterson and William, 2006). The Nigerian economy after independence has since undergone fundamental structural changes. These changes all the while have not resulted to significant and sustainable economic development. The unemployment situation worsen during the oil boom era when the economy grew with outrageous profits from the oil and able men has to abandoned the farm for wage employment in urban cities (Douglason and Gbosi, 2006).

According to Central Bank of Nigeria (2003), the national unemployment rate, rose from 4.3% in 1970 to 6.4% in 1980. The high rate of unemployment observed in 1980 was as a result of depression in the economy during the late 1970s, as a result of the nation just coming out of the civil war. To worsen the situation, the stabilization measures adopted by the government forced many companies to produce below their installed capacity, this led to the close down of many industries while few of them were forced to retrench a large proportion of their workforce, Nigerian government also placed an embargo on employment. Specifically the total disengagement from the Federal Civil

Service rose from 2,724 in 1980 to 6,294 in 1984 (Odusola, 2001), as a result of this unemployment rate fluctuated around 6.0% to 7.1% since then till 1987. It is important to state that the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) adopted in 1986 had serious implications on employment generation in Nigeria, as unemployment rate decline from 7.1% in 1987 to as low as 1.8% in 1995 after which it rose to 3.4% between 1996 and 2005 (Douglason and Gbosi, 2006). Aigbokhan (2000) emphasized that graduate unemployment accounted for less than 1% of the unemployed in the 1970’s and by 1984, the proportion has rose to 6.2% this was as a result of the free education introduced at all levels that prompted mass enrolment of pupils without emphasis for employment after graduation. In conclusion Akintoye, 2008 concluded that graduate unemployment accounted for about 32% of the unemployed labour force in Nigeria between 1992 and 1997 and the figure has since been on the increase annually.

Agriculture is the principal source of food, livelihood and foreign exchange earnings in sub-saharan Africa including Nigeria (Badiane and Delgado, 1995). Production is particularly an important component of food security in Africa and the commercial imports will contribute less than 10% of food supply over the next ten years (Rosen, 1997). Hence, agricultural production is critical to meet food security and economic development in the face of rapid population growth. It is been projected that Africa will within the next decade with the growth rate of 2.5% per year, with nearly three-quarters of its workforce employed in agriculture (World Bank, 1998).

II. CONCEPT OF UNEMPLOYMENT

Employment as used in economics refers to the utilization of factors of production such as land, labour and capital in the production and distribution of goods and services. The concept is most commonly used however, to describe labour utilization. Thus, employment is a times taken to be a way of tapping human resources. Mcconnell (1982), says there are two facets of economic efficiency that of providing jobs for those who are able and willing to work and that of using unemployed resources in the most efficient manner. According to him, economic efficiency is achieved when full employment and full production are realized or, stated in another way, when unemployment and under-employment are avoided. A worker is unemployed when he is involuntarily out of work. In defining unemployment, most countries follow the International Labour Organizations recommendations of regarding the reference period as one week.

There seem to be a general consensus on the definition of unemployment. The International Labour Organization

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(ILO) defines the unemployed as the workers of the economically active population who are willing to work but are without work, including the people who have lost their jobs and those who are out of job voluntarily (World Bank, 1998). In the same vein, Gbosi (2006), defined unemployment as a situation in which people who are willing to work at the prevailing wage rate are unable to find jobs.

Unemployment has been categorized as one of the serious impediments to social progress. Apart from representing a colossal waste of a country’s manpower resources, it generates welfare loss in terms of lower output thereby leading to lower income and well-being (Akinboyo, 1987; Raheem, 1993). Unemployment is a very serious issue in Africa (Vandemortele, 1991; Rama, 1998) and particularly in Nigeria (Oladeji, 1994; Umoh, 1996) ascertained.

Generally, unemployment poses a threat to any economy in terms of resources or welfare cost apart from its potential as a source of political and social instability. With a sizeable proportion of the labour force not gainfully employed, total output falls below its potential level, thereby generating costs that are expressed in term of output forgone.

Ogbe (1986), identifies these costs as including the enormous loss of human resources in terms of either energies or knowledge and skills already acquired but not put to any use. Secondly, is that, the economy incures welfare costs when unemployed person get demoralized and suffer from loss of income and self esteem as the period of unemployment gets unduly prolonged. Thirdly, that a significantly high rate of unemployment in any country, leads to all sorts of social harassments such as corruption and armed robbery.

III. AGRICULTURE – A TOOL FOR MASSIVE FOOD

PRODUCTION AND EMPLOYMENT GENERATION IN NIGERIA

Agriculture is fundamental to the sustenance of life which on its own, constitute a bed rock of economic development of nations, especially in ensuring food security, which is vital for human development and essential raw materials, which is necessary for industrial production.

For a country like Nigeria, agricultural progress is critical to the overall economic growth with majority of the population engaging in it. Improved agricultural production is the most important ingredient for successful industrialization and economic development. Hence, agriculture holds the key to employment generation, food security and eradication of extreme poverty at both the rural and urban settings of the country. Infact, sustainable development can only be realized when people are able to feed themselves and have enough strategic reserve.

Nevertheless, Nigerian farmers are small scale in nature, with majority cultivating less than five hectares of farmland (Olayide, 1982), hence, they are less productive. A productive farm is one that provides most of the resources necessary for the farmer’s family to live upon such as food, fuel, fibre, heating plants etc. It is a farm that ensures food security as well as sustains the well-being of a community. This implies that a productive farm is also one which is able to ensure proper management of the nature resources, such

as biodiversity, soil, water, etc. For most farmers, a productive farm would also produce more goods than required for the country in order to allow trade within and between countries of the world.

Diversity in agricultural production is the key to food security, as it enables risk management in agriculture and preserves potentials for adaptation and change. Monoculture is a non-diverse production system. It entails a farmer producing only crops, but no livestock or only livestock and no crops. The benefits of raising livestock, among others are, it provides multiple goods, such as food, wool, hides and transportation. In case of famine when crops are not sufficient to ensure food safety and security, livestock can be used as food. Livestock also provide manure to fertilizer the soil to raise production.

On the other hand, in an agricultural system based on raising livestock, food has to be bought from other farmers or nations and wastes produced cannot be easily disposed. Nigeria as a nation is blessed with vegetation that allows for cultivation of crops and rearing of animals. It is no gain saying to say that Nigeria lost its greatness in agriculture as a result of neglect the sector suffered in the last decades, which in essence had been witnessing more exit of the older generation of farmers than entrance of able young men.

IV. CONCLUSION

Agriculture employs about 20% of the population as against 1% by the oil industry, it equally produced 49% of the nation’s gross domestic product as against it 9% produced by petroleum. Apart from providing the employment, it is also a veritable source of revenue for the government, hence, real development can only happen through agriculture, and therefore, if agriculture remains stagnant, industries cannot grow.

The Nigerian agriculture has been left largely in the hands of small, poor farmers who still remains committed to their old ways of farming techniques and get very little from governments by way of assistance.

Factors responsible for the failure of the agricultural sector to produce enough food for the people are multifarious. They include gross neglect to the agricultural sector, inadequate funding, poor extension services and delivery, and lack of loans to produce more than enough. Another factor is that the government has inevitably demonstrated ambivalence position towards research institutes. The country with all its rich endowment at independence now grows at a very low rate with less than 50% of the country’s cultivable land under cultivation and only 7% of the irrigable land under irrigation. Ninety percent of the land under cultivation is being tended by small holder and traditional farmers who used rudimentary and primitive production techniques (Toluwase, 2009).

The growth of the agricultural sector will strengthen the nation’s food security as well as create employment and raise the living standards of many small holder farmers, hence, the government should accelerate the development of the agricultural sector in a proper way by empowering extension workers, providing farm inputs and equipments, improving

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infrastructure and linking of farmers to various market chains.

The way forward to creating massive employment is for the government to lead the way and be sincere in its agricultural policies. Agriculture has been the country’s pre-occupation before the oil and ever since, it has been the greatest employment of labour and also viewed as the only sector within the economy that could employed all the unemployed Nigerians without having a negative effect on the other sectors of the economy.

V. RECOMMENDATION

It is been recommended that for the maximum utilization of the abundant, human and material resources in the country, commercializing of the Nigerian Peasant farmers and an integrated agriculture is advocated. Also, the agricultural sector must be moved from government doing everything into actual participation by farmers and public-private participation (PPP), the extension services should be encouraged and agricultural financing through soft loans, subsidies and grants seem to be the only remedy for improved and sustainable production.

Government should revisited the idea of the Central Bank policy of lending agricultural loans to farmers through commercial banks, they should make sure that only farmers that engages in practical agriculture are considered for the loan to avoid diversification of the money meant to boost agricultural production to other sectors.

Government should ensure good produce prices for farmers through agricultural schemes such as grains reserves, marketing agencies, attracting foreign buyers and developing free trade zone and post harvest processing facilities should be acquired and equipped for the farmer’s excess produce.

There is no doubt that for Nigerian small-scale farmers to gradually move towards commercial agriculture that can guarantee sustainable production there is need to expedite actions on the agricultural land development policy of the federal government. The tractor hiring scheme of the state governments should also be reinforced and be accessible to the need of the numerous small-scale farmers.

Agricultural machineries should be procured and made available for use so as to attract young school leavers and graduates just coming out of their various institutions of learning to take to agriculture as a profitable venture to reduce unemployment among them.

The government should re-introduced the extension farms at the various Local Government Areas to assist and train farmers and all those interested in farming in improved agricultural practices. This will help farmers to improve their inputs usage, reduce post-harvest losses and enhance proper land utilization to achieve optimum production.

Finally, post harvest processing equipment and storage facilities should be made accessible for the farmers to process and stored their surplus products for future use. Agriculture remains a viable sector if thoroughly explored. The sector has the potential of turning around the economy. Nigeria is a country with over 140 million people that is expected to grow at an average of about 1.8 growth rate, hence the need to provide more food for the Nigerian’s is

now more compelling than ever before, therefore, those who are interested in farming and the sale of farm produce must be encourage and assisted with loans, so that they would be able to engage in adequate food production and reduce the number of the unemployed in the nation roaming the streets.

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