Economic Summit Group: Nigeria Needs 27m Jobs To Avert Labour Crisis

President Bola Tinubu has explained wherefore his medication established the N200 cardinal involution money to enactment micro, small, and mean enterprises (MSMEs) and manufacturers. He said it became indispensable to assistance them successful boosting competitiveness and addressing structural challenges.

He said beyond the GDP maturation of 4.23 per cent recorded successful September 2025, the economical reforms spearheaded by his medication had started yielding tangible results crossed sectors, citing projections from multilateral agencies and indigenous economical experts.

This is arsenic the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) launched its landmark report, “From Hustle to Decent Work: Unlocking Jobs and Productivity for Economic Transformation successful Nigeria, astatine the 31st Nigerian Economic Summit. The study calls for a bold, coordinated nationalist docket to tackle unemployment, rise productivity, and unlock sustainable economical transformation.

The study reveals that Nigeria’s working-age colonisation volition emergence to 168 cardinal by 2030, requiring the instauration of 27 cardinal caller ceremonial jobs, an mean of 4.5 cardinal jobs per twelvemonth to support unemployment astatine existent levels.

President Tinubu stated this successful Abuja connected Monday erstwhile helium officially opened the 31st Nigerian Economic Summit. He noted that the content successful the nation’s economical experts had been the magic wand down his administration’s ongoing reforms.

Represented astatine the acme by his deputy, Vice President Kashim Shettima, the President maintained that each decisions his medication took had been “guided by the pursuit of equilibrium betwixt economical logic and nationalist expectation.”

He restated his administration’s resoluteness to rekindle anticipation for poor, vulnerable, and jobless Nigerians by creating corridors for them, particularly the youth, to entree loans, grants, and equity investments.
His words: “As a people-oriented government, our precedence remains restoring anticipation to the unemployed, the poor, the excluded, and the vulnerable. We person created pathways for young Nigerians to entree grants, loans, and equity investments of up to 100,000 dollars to standard their enterprises, innovate, and physique sustainable livelihoods.
“We established a N200 cardinal involution money to enactment micro, small, and mean enterprises and manufacturers, helping them flooded structural challenges and heighten competitiveness.
“Our enlargement of integer micro-loan entree has improved fiscal inclusion, empowering tiny businesses and stimulating community-level productivity. These efforts underline our committedness to an system that works for each Nigerians.”
The NESG warns that without urgent action, unemployment and underemployment could treble by the extremity of the decade, leaving millions trapped successful low-skilled, low-income work.

“The situation earlier america is to determination decisively into the consolidation phase, embedding reforms that thrust jobs, growth, and inclusion, portion laying the foundations for semipermanent translation that secures prosperity for each Nigerian,” Niyi Yusuf, chairman, NESG said.

Presenting the study astatine the summit, elder economist astatine the NESG, Dr Wilson Erumebor, stated: “This is not conscionable a labour marketplace issue; it is simply a immense improvement challenge. Without decisive reforms to make decent and productive jobs, an full procreation risks being trapped successful susceptible enactment that neither lifts families retired of poorness nor moves the federation forward”.

The Jobs and Productivity Report identifies 5 cardinal challenges: constricted extent of Nigeria’s backstage sector; skills mismatch and anemic quality superior development; mediocre learning outcomes successful education; maturation concentrated successful low-employment sectors; and structural bottlenecks specified arsenic inadequate infrastructure and precocious vigor costs.

To code these, the study introduces the Nigeria Works Framework, which is simply a blueprint for a Jobs and Productivity Agenda that emphasises: skills for productivity, sectoral engines of growth, enterprise-led growth, particularly tiny concern support, upgrading the informal economy, information and organization reforms and productivity for prosperity.

The NESG concluded that productivity indispensable go the cardinal metric of nationalist competitiveness. It indispensable beryllium tracked, measured and elevated arsenic the instauration of shared prosperity.

The study showed that implicit 90% of Nigeria’s workers are successful informal employment, portion implicit 80% are engaged successful low-productivity sectors/activities. It called for the state to prioritise 4 sectors—manufacturing, construction, ICT, and nonrecreational services—that clasp the top imaginable for large-scale occupation instauration and productivity growth.

In the report, the NESG said six strategical pillars would marque up the Nigeria works framework. The sectors are skills for productivity, sectoral engines of growth, endeavor development...