Street Debate: Can young Nigerians stay afloat in a struggling economy? | The 77 Percent

this week on the 77 Street debate inflation has really made it difficult for us because the cost of production has almost tripled in the past one year we have churned out over 1.5 million youth we have built their capacity we have done what we call linkages to jobs who are the people that are actually partaking of these programs because people that really need it to be honest I don't think they are aware thank you welcome to Abuja Nigeria's capital now Nigeria is Africa's biggest economy there are so many young people here who are vibrant Innovative working hard every day to build their lives but recent times have been hard Nigeria's economy has been plagued with unemployment Rising costs of goods and even a failing currency so how are these young people coping that's the topic of discussion today and I'm going to start with a biome about me now you run a small business here in Abuja can you just explain to us what you do and how you started business hey I started akara business as a Copa that was during kovit in 2020 in Bayelsa State and then it was due to the urge of seeing so many Nigerian graduates doing nothing at the end of their NYC ssis so I decided to double into Accra business that was sustain me and rather than going into depression by the way acara is being Nigeria and you decided to go into that because of unemployment now I'll come to you I name how has business been for you especially the past few years you run a cake business you make pastries and Cake business in the past one year has been really difficult we have had to strategize and look for other ways to make money around our industry we make cakes we make pastries but it looks like it isn't sustainable so we had to include other services like trainings training of other people whom I want to learn the craft and that has really been able to help us stay afloat okay so what exactly makes what exactly has made business difficult for you first of all inflation has really made it difficult for us because the cost of production has almost tripled in the past one year our profit margin keeps shrinking and so we are we are earning lower than we used to We Can't employ as many hands as we need so we are not able to cater for the masses as much as we are supposed to all right um so it's not just business owners that are affected by this ongoing economic crisis we also have a student here with us Leila Leila can you just tell us how the economic situation has affected you uh it affected Us in so many ways such as food stops Transportation like foodstuffs prices are high so we find it very difficult to afford some things it's tough being a student and having to deal with increasing prices must make it even more difficult I'm going to go to Martha now you're an economist and a researcher can you explain to us why things are like this in Nigeria I think first things first it's not necessarily a Nigerian problem the world all over we're seeing economic downturn the US is also facing unprecedented inflation rates but that being said uh we are witnessing an aftermath of you know all the economic activities that happened during covet so there was a boom in Tech and we saw that coming into this yet that boom crashed that Tech boom crash now that the world has opened back up we're seeing people going back to work and you know trying to go back to the things they used to do before however Nigeria has has been facing economic downturn even before the covet crisis so I'm going to come to you ebuka I saw you smiling when Mata was talking you it seems like what she's saying resonate resonates with you yeah what she's saying resonate to me but I think for me I started my business recently with 5 000 while on my program at Lagos business school and within a month I did 2.5 million in sales in turnover why because of I see that even if we are going through even as we are going through the economic issues uh a lot of people are ready to support one another and I think we live in a supportive environment okay thank you for that point so not everyone is feeling it as much as you know but we still have like a huge population I mean there's recent data from the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics that says that 63 of people living in Nigeria live in multi-dimensional poverty so um I want to come to Mr okon now you work with the humanitarian Ministry now um why maybe you can start by explaining to us why the problem seems so dire right now what happens is uh in 2015 during the campaign promises one of the promises was what was that they are going to create massive job for the for the Youth and so when they came into Power this is a president Administration in 2016 they created what we call job creation units in office of the vice president it was to tackle the youth components of the of the national investment program so in our program how to get out of this uh poverty issue out of how to get out of this unemployment issue we created skill acquisition programs and one of these is that whether you are trained whether you're educated or Not educated then we if you want if you acquire skills maybe as a carpenter a mercenary a plumber electrical engineer automobile engineer or in the hospitality traits all of this we give you a setup pack that will enable you to start off on your own okay Mr Cohn you are talking about what the government is doing to help young people I'm going to come back to that point but I want to speak with okay you have um something to say I think the problem with our economy presently is the mismanagement of the funds that we have in Nigeria Nigeria is already blessed naturally so when we get funds from what we generate from our natural resources it is the appropriation of these funds that make the country poor the major problem we have in Nigeria is the decimation of the wealth that almighty God has blessed the country with and I think that the ngos the pressure groups are not doing enough because if they are able to come out to man pressure on their politicians and the politicians are up on their toes to do what they are supposed to do we'll be able to end a better living in Nigeria so it goes beyond just people having the government work and get money for themselves than going to dissemit the money to the society through contracts and businesses in different areas okay thank you very much for that I want to come to Cynthia now you uh we were discussing earlier you mentioned that you don't think the situation is that bad okay so if if I was to pull back on what she mentioned right um the technical system experience the boom during the covid-19 period and then what we are seeing is the bust right and so that is going to lead to stabilization so we expect to see startups who that are more sustainable we expect to see startups that are not just about raising money but about building products actually solve real problems so for example we're going to pull back on what the federal government is doing helping students get skills giving them starter pack yes there's always going to be this major problem of after you've skilled someone and you've given the other person what happens to them after right some of these people if you check it they sell the starter pack right to go and sustain themselves because guess what these people need money to live so we expect to see Founders who just say okay what what is the challenge with having skilled all these Carpenters is there a way to connect them to Market space I want to go to Mr okon now since 2016 when the program came on board we have churned out over 1.5 million youth we have built their capacity we have done what we call linkages to jobs not only building Your Capacity we must ensure that you are linked to the private sector that will enable you so that you can now be uh established on your own so we have quite a number of young people here has anyone here benefited from you know any of these government programs no okay you have yes so I've benefited from the uh export promotion Council they took me to Gambia where I went to uh showcase exhibit my arm showcase my product I've gotten a lot of sales I've gotten a lot of requests orders but the issue again is that like recently I just got some orders from Gambia and but the issue is that getting uh access to finance access to finance to to send to produce more and send my product to Gambia the money is not there the bank can get you give you loans because I don't know I don't know why you're not giving loans but the bank is hard for you to get loans to the bank and that's that's the major issue fees but I think they are working but they are not working in system um you have something to say I mean we can give some credit to the government but I think they are not doing enough in a country or for over 200 million the 80 percent of the Nigerian populations are the youths and you're talking about training just 1.5 million this is is very unfair and there's no way a country would drive with such kind of numbers so I'm a humanitarian and I work in times of eradicating hunger and falling security and the type of hunger that is in this country right now is not is unimaginable they are not doing enough and they should rise up to their responsibility you are nothing you agree with that right I quite agree with him because 1.5 million is just a like a little drop in in the ocean so but we are you know if I tell you how much you are spending on this program on monthly basis if you have 1 million uh beneficiaries at 30 30 000 that's how much that's 30 billion naira every month and then there's no state there's no State I repeat there's no state that has anything less than 350 million naira that trickles down to the Grassroots past it so you see it it it it entails a whole lot of of funds thank you Mr okon has admitted that the government needs to do more see if they are you want to respond to that so I have questions on like three fronts the first one is this money and these programs who are the people that are actually partaking of these programs because people that really need it to be honest I don't think they're aware because I I had the opportunity to because I mean part of what we are doing at their book you want to support local leader Artisans so like okay let's go and partner with the government right to give us this local level they say they've trained so that we can give them access to Market spaces we have a lot of customers who need access to their services right and then we go we have one or two conversations obviously I can't mention some names but the information I got was that it's based on who knows who so somebody will bring 50 people from just bring them to Abuja they will train them after I train them send them back to Jos and then after everything you can't even trace the people that have been trained if you want to support them you can't even find them to support there's also the question of monitoring and evaluation can we Trace them like do we have a database if we have private support that wants to support them where do we go to to find that there's also the problem of sustainability you know how this government works four years in four years out so what happens with all the programs okay Cynthia has raised a number of serious issues Mr okon do you want to respond to that you are very right you are very correct this is what has been happening before I gave you 1.5 million we have a database for this 1.5 million just come to our office now you have known Mr Khan I'm going to give you specific numbers I'll direct you we have the the database we have their phone numbers I'll tell you call this one call this one anywhere it throughout the country it's not restricted to Abuja it's its Nationwide that since there's an fct there's no State I repeat I'm quote me there's no state that has less than 10 000 beneficiaries from Empower lost it in the country you can see him after we are done with the debate but uh before we proceed I think Mr okon here has made some and if we are being honest change does not happen overnight right it's it takes time and I know um Kingsley is an economist some of the solutions that the government has come up with we have things like rebranding the for example um other other policies that the government has come up with do you think that those things are helpful do you think that they are going to make a difference so I think those are those are first aid you understand to the bigger problem you redesign it in Ira probably to mop up excess cash liquidity in the system because people will be forced to bring back the money back to Banks and I guess that's the reason why the Central Bank supported the next action was limit the amount you can withdraw so that way when the excess cash comes back into the banking system you don't take as much out that's like I said it's first aid to the situation so what we need to see right now after that is to first try to increase liquidity in terms of a Forex especially making Forex availability available available for business owners and the rest yeah I want to come to Annie now um can you just tell us some of the problems that your business is facing and maybe how the government and ngos can help okay I would say the major challenge that we're facing in my industry is the high cost of production the inflation has really affected the cost of our goods and so we cannot make as much money as we used to imagine that at the beginning of this year a bag of flour was something between 20 and 25 000 I said today a bag of flour is 35 000 naira and so the cost of production that is rising that keeps Rising daily makes it very difficult for us to still keep making profits while we do what we do we talk about cost of production it's not just cost of production there is also the cost of normal things that make life easy for people like normal food in the market so why why are we experiencing that in Nigeria Kingsley so I would speak on this from the world Banks reports and what struck me with that report is the fact that someone that earns 30 000 error minimum wage your money is now an equivalent of 19 200 naira so you're earning more but you can't even spend as much as what you're earning so it means the purchasing power of Nigerians has actually dropped drastically that is one number two you can take away mismanagement of phones as part of the reasons why we're actually facing the problems we're having she talked about the business she does and cost of employment the cost of even providing Services has actually gone even higher I'm a small older farmer but I can tell you categorically right now that what's a price of a crate of egg for example that stays for close to 2 000 error but I can tell you as a farmer you don't even make up to 50 of what you used to make initially when you create of every 600 naira that's how bad situation has become and when you look at the whole of all of these it's a myriad of factors from poor management of the economy to inflation to government not paying attention to the macro economics around the country and if you agree with me you look at a lot of programs government designed for business most times they are trying to attract that foreign investor what about the local investor in fact before that foreign investor would come in they want to see the local investor doing well and that way they can say wow you can get this margin of profit based on what this local investor is doing maybe we can actually bring our investment here so more attention needs to be given to the local informal sector if at all we want to get out of the situation where now I want to ask another question whose responsibility is it to help you know solve this economic problem is it does it solely rest on the government or is there a way that we cannot come together to solve the problem okay so the responsibility for sustainable developments and growth in our society relies not only on the government but also on the private sector also on as I said at the non-governmental the ngos and the csos but it's very crucial that we look into ourselves and then ask ourselves what is our value system what do we as a people hold very sacrosans you could see most of the money making institution in this country has some private sectors and then some religious sectors what are those people doing are the people are we holding accounts of those people who are receiving much funds to do the right thing or we are just admiring them so I think it also boils them to our values with people okay thank you very much for that I want to come to you I think they are your hand was up before My Hope Is that after this conversation at least we have representatives from each industry right that we go back and you know Implement some of the ideas that we've mentioned from changing our value systems to Founders Building Products actually solve real problems to the government actually focusing on partnering with the private sector so that they can extend the impact of their work and to to mob a better relationship so that our economy can get better we've seen the way things are going now the prices of things are going and there's of course a saying that when things go up they don't come down is there any hope with the way our economy is being managed right now um it's not going to happen overnight and it's there is hope for improvement but it's not Improvement is not going to happen because we're hoping it will happen Improvement has to happen because we're taking decisive action to make it happen Improvement has to happen because the government has seen what it does situation we're in and make policies that allow businesses in Nigeria Thrive long term we can't come out of a recession if our productivity is low we have 245 Industries to produce and export goods we have to help small businesses to scale up and you know even if they are selling to local markets within West Africa that is income generation for Nigeria um but yeah there is hope but it's going to take a lot of concerted efforts you know with the government and with government implementing policies that are backed by data to help move the economy out of the Christmas I think that's where we'll draw the cuttings today thank you so much to our panelists for joining us and maybe you watching you might not be from Nigeria but you might be facing economic Hard Times tell us how you're coping and what you think can be done to make things better I would like to hear from you thank you so much for watching bye [Music]

Channel: DW The 77 Percent

Views: 3,077

Keywords: DW, DW Africa, Africa

Id: qXA0F-grdqI

Length: 20min 17sec (1217 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 14 2023