During the pandemic last year, a panel led by the Vice-president Yemi Osinbajo on economic sustainability projected that nearly 40 million Nigerians will be unemployed in 2021. In March, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that the unemployment rate in Nigeria increased by 6.2% from the second quarter to the fourth quarter of 2020. This placed Nigeria in the third position on the global list of countries with the highest number of unemployed persons.
To anyone, this news is disheartening. More devastating is the fact that the rate of unemployed youths aged 15 to 24 stood at 53.4% in the fourth quarter, while that of youths aged 25 to 34 was 37.2%.